


lovely, dark, and deep

by teacupfulofbrains



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, and god damn it i am going to get him, bad things might happen but this fic is not out to hurt you i promise, even if i have to write him myself, i want powerful!eldritch!horror!patton, individual content warnings on each chapter, logan tries to mansplain the ocean to a marine biologist, lots of soft family bonds, mer!logan, mer!patton, mer!roman, mild angst but nothing rlly bad i promise, minor eldritch horror!patton, that's right kids it's a mer!sanders fic, the analogical is there but there's lots of platonic stuff too, tons of platonic dynamics, virgil and logan sass each other constantly but it's fine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-27 00:25:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacupfulofbrains/pseuds/teacupfulofbrains
Summary: virgil wants exactly two things out of life: doctor sanders’ advice on his dissertation and the freedom to pursue his research in peace. he thinks he’s gotten both of these things, and then he finds a wounded merman tangled in a net on the beach. he rescues him, because of course he does, and that’s not so bad.then the others show up, and man, they are NOTHING like disney led him to believe.at least one of them’s cute, right?(OR: the analogical mermaid!au that exactly one person asked for)





	1. the shattered water made a misty din

**Author's Note:**

> AT LONG LAST IT IS HERE I HOPE YOU ENJOY MY LOVES  
> tw will be on a chapter by chapter basis, okay? i love you all <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter tw: nets, mentions of drowning, mentions of drugs, mentions of injury/blood

Virgil slams his head down on the lab table. He’s been doing this on and off for the past fifteen minutes, but this time is special. This time, he moves too fast and misjudges how hard he’s bringing his head down and _slams_ into the table. He hisses out a stream of curse words, pressing his hands to his forehead. They’re ice cold, like they always are, and for once he’s not feeling bitchy about it.

“That sounded like it hurt,” Doctor Sanders calls. Virgil has to resist the urge to flip him off, even though he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t care if he did. Doctor Sanders is, if anything, perpetually amused by Virgil and his almost-freakish dedication to lab safety. He’s been a research assistant here since he was a sophomore, and he’s the only one who’s survived longer than a temporary stint. He’s also the only one who managed to snag Doctor Sanders as his dissertation advisor, and he’s stupidly proud of it.

“Not nearly as much as this bullshit,” Virgil grumbles. “Fuck organic chemistry.”

“She is a cruel and unyielding mistress,” Doctor Sanders muses. Virgil rolls his eyes before leaning back into the microscope. He’s been staring at this water sample for _twenty minutes_ and still has absolutely _no_ fucking idea what he’s supposed to be seeing.

“So, theoretically,” he calls, jotting down an equation with his free hand while keeping his eyes trained on the water sample, “how much would it cost to replace one of these?”

“Why do you need to know?” 

“Let’s suppose, hypothetically speaking, that a certain overworked doctoral student got so fed up with whatever bullshit he was attempting to do that he snapped, and then snapped the microscope as stress relief. How much would that cost to repair and-slash-or replace?”

“You barely make enough to keep up with your student loan payments, Virgil. You definitely don’t earn enough money to replace one of those.”

“I’ve got a research grant.”

“As do I, but if you want to spend that money, you have to justify it. I highly doubt they’d accept ‘I need a new microscope because I broke the old one in a fit of frustrated rage’ as a valid reason. Even if, by some minor miracle, they did, it would just teach you that breaking lab equipment solves all your problems. Which, I will tell you, it does not.”

“How would you know?” Virgil mumbles. “You don’t break the lab equipment.”

“You haven’t seen the Beaker Room,” Doctor Sanders says.

Virgil perks up at that, pulling his head away from the water samples. (Fuck water samples, anyway. They have yet to show him anything interesting.) Doctor Sanders’ voice had been grave, but his eyes are sparkling, and his mouth is twisted up in a joking smile. “What’s the Beaker Room, Doc? I’m all ears!” 

“You can call me Thomas, you know. You’ve only been invading my lab for years now.”

“Okay, then, what’s the Beaker Room, _Thomas?_ ”

“It used to be a storage closet, but it’s too small for that now. It’s where I take all the old, broken beakers that I don’t use anymore. When I’m particularly stressed, I’ll strap on goggles and throw them at the wall. There’s something satisfying in the shatter.” 

“And you’ve been _holding out on me_?” Virgil gasps.

“You’ve discovered your own method of coping, if the indentations on my lab tables are anything to go by.” Virgil does flip him off this time, but Doctor Sanders – no, Thomas – just laughs. He does that a lot, Virgil finds, unlike most of the other doctors he’s met.

He’d been cautioned against only reaching out to one potential dissertation advisor by almost everyone, but he’s always been stubborn. Virgil works at his own pace, and he’s a little eccentric sometimes, but he gets results. Thomas respects that, so it was going to be him or it was going to be nobody.

(Virgil’s glad it’s him. Writing a dissertation is stressful enough _with_ an advisor, let alone without one.)

“Yeah, but yours seems like it involves less bodily injury, and I’m all for that.”

“I don’t know about that. I’ve taken to wearing leather gloves and an apron after pulling one too many glass shards out of my hand.” Virgil winces at the thought, but Thomas seems unruffled. He’s standing in front of a whiteboard, with a marker tucked behind each ear and three more in his lab coat pocket. He’s chewing on the cap of the marker in his hand, pausing every so often to add to whatever’s on the whiteboard with swift, sure strokes.

Virgil returns to the fucking water samples. At this point, he’s legitimately considering just downing the entire test tube like a goddamn shot and seeing what happens, because even in the worst-case scenario in which he dies, _at least that would be fucking interesting_. 

He’s saved from the never-ending monotony when Thomas calls him over. “Hey, Virge, c’mere! I want your input on something!” 

Virgil shoves away from the lab table in an instant, eternally thankful that he’s on an office chair with wheels and not a stool. He points the back of his chair towards Thomas, presses his feet against the ground, and kicks off, propelling himself flying across the lab. He snags Thomas’s arm to stop himself, and Thomas (long since used to Virgil’s antics) tugs his arm towards himself to reel Virgil in.

The whiteboard has a diagram of a sea turtle on it (a leatherback, he thinks), with the anatomy clearly labelled in varying color-coded markers. Thomas worries the cap of the black marker between his teeth, and Virgil’s tempted to call him out on the un-sanitary-ness of the whole thing but decides against it, given that he had been considering drinking random water samples less than thirty seconds ago. 

“Thoughts?” Thomas asks. Virgil scans the diagram quickly; it’s not exactly to scale, but that’s more Virgil’s forte than Thomas’s. He’d been legitimately considering an art minor in college, but dropped it when he found Thomas and his research position. The anatomy is correct, and Virgil can’t spot any glaring errors. 

“I mean, I don’t know what you want me to say, boss. It looks like what I’d expect the inside of a leatherback sea turtle to look like.”

Thomas tilts his head, still twisting the cap between his teeth, and he’s clearly anxious about something, and that’s making Virgil anxious. Virgil turns so that he’s straddling the chair backwards, resting his arms on the back of the chair and resting his chin on his arms. “Yeah, but –” 

He leaves the black marker dangling from his mouth as he pulls a red one out of his pocket. He makes a few quick, precise marks on the turtle’s flippers, and adds notations on the board to indicate the type of damage he means. Virgil realizes what he’s doing now; he’s simulating a boating accident, trying to figure out the best way to go about rehabilitation. He does this a lot, calls Virgil over to ask his input. Virgil can’t say he minds it that much. 

“Thoughts now? I’m trying to figure out if the turtle can even survive something this drastic. I mean, best case scenario, they survive and end up in an aquarium, right? I don’t think this one would ever return to the wild, but that’s just me.”

Virgil suspects that this is the reason Thomas keeps him around. He’s good at outside-the-box innovations, but Virgil is good at grounding him. Thomas can be a bit of an idealist, and Virgil has always been good at spotting flaws in plans. In the past, he’d been a bit caustic, but Thomas had never gotten offended. He’d just nodded, seriously, and asked Virgil how he thought the flaws could be fixed. Virgil’s gotten better about being “more sensitive” over the years, but Thomas has never cared one way or the other.

Virgil reassesses the turtle diagram, taking care to note the injures Thomas has specified. A loud crack of thunder echoes through the house right as he opens his mouth, and it startles him. he flinches backwards, forgetting that he turned the chair, and falls flat on his back. 

“Virgil, you good?” Thomas crouches, offering a hand to pull him up; Virgil sits up slowly. Now the front _and_ the back of his head hurt, and there’s apparently a storm brewing, which is great. It means fucking _storm patrol_ tomorrow, and Virgil hates storm patrol. 

“I’ve been better,” he snipes. Thomas caps his markers and slides them into his pocket. Virgil is about to weigh the pros and cons of drinking the water samples again when Thomas utters nine words that make Virgil fall in love _instantly_.

“I can finish up the samples if you want.”

“Really?” Virgil’s eyes are shining, and he’s actually smiling. Thomas laughs, ruffling his hair, and Virgil hates that but right now even _that_ can’t shake him. “You mean – really?”

“I know how much you dislike going on storm patrol, and it’s looking like we’re gonna have to, from what the weather’s telling me. And I know how much you like drawing the waves when they get like this. Just go, before I change I mind, alright?”

Virgil considers hugging him, but that would be weird, and he’s already weird. He settles for a quiet but sincere “ _Thank you!_ ” before bolting out of the lab as fast as he can without running (because, despite his excitement, it’s still dangerous to run in a lab.) 

(Thomas watches him go, smiling fondly, before turning back to the water samples. He doesn’t like doing them either, but he’s slightly concerned Virgil will implode if he doesn’t take a break soon.) 

He throws his lab coat and non-slip shoes haphazardly into the corner of his room, shrugging off his clothes in favor of worn grey sweatpants with a hole in the knee and his favorite purple sweatshirt. He doesn’t even bother to put a shirt on beneath the hoodie, but he does put on a pair of thick socks. He grabs his sketchpad and pencil case from the desk and books it to the screened-in porch.

The second he opens the door, he is greeted with a fine mist from the rain blowing through the screen and the fresh scent of the sea. Virgil flings his arms out and takes a deep breath, giving himself a moment to enjoy the clean rain on his face and the clean scent in his nose and the clean feeling in his soul as he watches the storm rage.

He curls on the small couch, props his sketchpad against his knees, and begins to draw. He has a book, rich heavy paper bound in leather, where he does his official work, painstakingly detailed illustrations of different marine creatures and their anatomy. Sometimes he sells them to people who publish them in textbooks. Sometimes he sells them to private collectors. Thomas has several of his personal favorites framed in various places around the house. Virgil absolutely hates it, but he has yet to deny Thomas when he asks for a piece of Virgil’s work. 

That’s the official stuff, though. This sketchpad, which he bought for three dollars at a convenience store at one twenty-three am, is where he keeps the stuff he does for himself. Mostly, that’s sketches of the sea, and mostly, it’s sketches of storms.

Virgil likes the way the ocean looks when it storms. Up close, it’s wild and unpredictable, but from afar, it looks like someone has taken a sheet and is shaking it out. Virgil’s spent hours staring at the ripples of the waves, mesmerized, without putting a single stroke of graphite to paper. He likes to draw storms because no two storms will whip the water up in the same way. Every storm is unique, and he draws the sea during as many storms as he can to record them, like a fingerprint of nature. 

(He spent a lot of middle and high school writing angsty poems about the sea, so it’s really a wonder that anyone was surprised when he announced he was majoring in marine biology.)

(Everyone was surprised. It stings, more than he cares to admit, but he’s determined to succeed and fling it back into the faces of everyone who ever doubted him.)

Virgil slides his pencil across the paper, capturing the swells of the waves and the mist of the sea spray and the shifting clouds in the sky. He adds the cliff in the distance, carefully smudges the sky and drags his eraser through them to create the foggy beam of the lighthouse. 

He glances up at the ocean again right as a massive bolt of lightning streaks across the sky. It arcs from cloud to cloud before it pierces the sea with a resounding crack that forces Virgil to shield his eyes from the resulting flare of brightness. When the phosphenes clear from his eyes and he can finally stand to look at the sea again, there are still little arcs of electricity crackling across the surface. 

The screen door slams open, causing him to jump and send his pencil flying. Thomas bursts out onto the porch, eyes wide. “Virgil! Are you okay?”

“What?” Virgil puts the sketchpad down and leans forward, stretching his fingertips towards his pencil. Thomas picks it up and hands it back to him. “Yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I was making tea in the kitchen when I saw the flash! How close was the lightning? Are you okay?”

“It struck the ocean,” Virgil says, and his vision is still a little bit fuzzy from the brightness but he can see Thomas’s worried expression as he sits down next to Virgil. “My vision’s a little messed up, but it should clear in a couple of minutes.”

Thomas sighs, and Virgil’s expecting him to go back to minding his tea in the kitchen. Instead, he pulls his knees to his chest and watches the storm with Virgil. He’s not wearing his lab coat, having traded it out for a worn _Steven Universe_ t-shirt and jeans under a soft gray sweater. Virgil flips to a clean sketchbook page, angles it away from Thomas, and begins to draw again. He catches the feathering of Thomas’s bangs over his face, the calm yet weary expression on his face (it’s all in the eyes, really), the curve of his knees and the hunch of his shoulders.

He’s working on the shading of the face when Thomas gets up and goes into the kitchen again. The sketch is mostly done, anyway, and when Thomas comes back, he’s carrying two mugs of tea. One of them is white, with soft golden galaxy swirls on it, and the other is black and says _WELCOME TO THE SHITSHOW_ on it in blocky white capital letters.

Virgil takes his black mug and sniffs, cautiously, but he needn’t have worried. They like different kinds of teas, and Thomas has put Virgil’s teabags in, along with the juice of one lemon wedge and a spoonful of sugar. Virgil sips it, carefully, and Thomas picks up his sketchbook.

“Is this me?” he asks. Virgil nods, wrapping his hands around the mug and letting the warmth seep in and soothe the cramping muscles. “It’s perfect, kiddo, I love it.”

Virgil pretends the pleased flush on his face is from downing a mouthful of scalding tea.

* * *

 

Suddenly, he can’t see.

Everything is giving off the same signals, and he can’t tell where he’s going. He crashes into a hard, flat surface, and he’s already dazed but now he thinks he might lose consciousness. He presses his hands against the – cliff, he thinks? – and feels his way along, but it ends too soon and he’s back in open water.

He tries to feel for where things are, but everything feels the same. It’s the worst possible place to be in. He can only see a few feet in front of him in normal circumstances, and these are not normal circumstances. His eyes are still swimming with phosphenes, and the ocean is dark and turbulent from the storm. The lightning bolt – because that’s what it was, he realizes, a lightning bolt – has electrified everything. He can’t tell one object from another. With a jolt (pun very much unintended), he realizes that he can’t even distinguish animate from inanimate, the easiest distinction to make.

He’s dead in the water.

Worse, he’s unprotected in the water. He can’t risk discharging any electricity without frying what little vision he has left, and that means he has no defense mechanism. He can’t just swim away, either, because he’s fast as hell but he’s also basically blind right now. At best, he’ll slam into another cliff and knock himself unconscious. At worst, he’ll run into something a lot bigger and more dangerous than he is, and he’ll end up injured or dead.

He gives off the distress call, trying to summon his pod, but it doesn’t come out right. He can’t judge how loud it is, can’t tell which direction he should be sending it in, can’t even tell if he managed to get the right call sign out. Everything rings loudly in his ears, and the electricity in the water is fucking up _everything_. 

He’s never been on the receiving end of his own discharges, and he can’t say he ever wanted to be. He’ll definitely have second thoughts the next time he lets off electricity, assuming that he survives long enough to _have_ a “next time”. 

He can see exactly one foot in front of him, and even that’s blurred and shaky. He needs to find his pod, he needs to get his bearings, he needs to get out of open water. He moves forward, carefully, attempting to feel for anything that might be in front of him with his hands outstretched. He makes it a painstakingly slow, painstakingly short distance before hearing a high-pitched whine behind him.

He’s not sure what it is, but he’s positive that he’ll hate it if he finds out.

He propels himself forward, twisting his body around like a snake to try and evade whatever’s behind him. He doesn’t know if it has propulsion weapons, but he can’t take the chance that it doesn’t. His already blurry vision is reduced to nothing, and he lets out another distress call (and it still sounds wrong, why does it sound wrong?).

Then he hits something.

Instantly, he’s entangled. Something sharp is digging into his arms, his torso, his tail, all at once, like a thousand tiny stingers. There’s something constricting his arms and tail, and his immediate, panicked thought is _giant squid_. He hasn’t encountered one before, and he’s always assumed he would have his wits and his vision and his _pod_ about him if (when?) he ever faced one, but he’s defenseless. 

He tries to sink his teeth into the nearest tentacle (he can still bite whatever it is), but he hears the distinctive clang of tooth on metal. He starts to sink, unable to move his tail enough to keep himself in one place (let alone swim), and as the sharp scent of his own blood hits his nose, he finally realizes, horrified, what’s happened. 

It’s not a squid at all. It’s a net. He’s stuck in a net.

This information causes him to flail even more wildly, but the more he struggles, the tighter the net constricts around him, and the deeper whatever’s stabbing him digs in. He keeps thrashing, hoping to break himself free, but his thoughts are becoming clouded and hazy.

 _Poison,_ his mind supplies, unhelpfully, as his struggles become weaker and weaker despite his best efforts. _The net is poisoned, and it’s constricting around you, and you’re going to be unconscious very soon_.

He tries for the distress call again, but all that comes out is a strangled squeak. Suddenly, his neck is on fire, and he can’t breathe. He tugs harder, but feels something stiffen around his neck. The net has wrapped around his neck, pinning his gills closed beneath it. For _literally any other member_ of his pod – of his whole species, even! – this wouldn’t be an issue. But he doesn’t have extra gills along his ribcage the way that they do.

He hadn’t thought it was possible for his kind to drown. It appears he’s about to be proven wrong.

Some sudden current sweeps through, pushing him along with it. He’s tossed and thrown head over tail as he fights for oxygen, fights to make it to the surface. Whatever the net’s laced with, however, is really starting to kick in, and he can barely muster the strength to stay conscious.

His head breaks water, suddenly, and there’s a driving rain pelting onto his face and he sucks in a desperate, much-needed breath before he’s sinking back into the water.

He fights against the net and the poison and his ever-dwindling oxygen supply to make it back to the surface for another precious gasp of air. He manages it once, twice, three times before he’s too weak to move at all. The ocean around him pulls back, and then it slams down, sudden and hard, again and again.

That’s not right. There aren’t this many waves out where he was.

 _But there are a lot of waves near the shore_ , his brain shouts, even as he’s edging towards unconsciousness. He’s thrown above water again, however briefly, and he’s barely clear-headed enough to breathe in. _You’re being tossed about in the breakers right now, which means that you’re close to the shoreline. And if you make it to the beach, you can at least breathe. Wait for whatever’s clouding you to work its way out of your system, and then work on getting out of this fucking net._

Even if he does make it to the beach, he doesn’t know if the net’s toxin is lethal or not. He could very well be dying already.

_You’ll definitely die if you don’t do something!_

He fights to keep his head above water, slammed down again and again by the rough waves (the breaking waves, the _shoreline_ waves) before he’s thrown into something much more substantial. He feels something wet and sticky on his face, and when he breathes in, he gags on seawater and sand. 

He’s made it to the beach. It’s nothing to celebrate, considering he’s really only here due to the fortuitous nature of the ocean and the fact that he hadn’t been that far offshore when the storm hit, but he’s so stupidly grateful to be alive and breathing that he allows himself a brief moment of happiness. 

That moment, however, is all he gets before he feels the tug of the sea at his tail again. He’s still close enough that the ocean could drag him back in, and if that happens, he will surely die. 

It burns like hell every time he breathes, and it’s a fiery agony to move, but he does. He’s limited by the constraints of the net and the haziness of his head and the many, _many_ active stab wounds littering his body, but he manages to do a weird sort of crawl thing and worm his way further up onto the safety of the beach. 

He makes it far enough away that he can no longer feel the water lapping against his scales. He knows he should probably keep going, just a little more, just to make sure that he’s out of the way of the changing tides, but he feels like he’s going to vomit if he so much as thinks about moving any more. 

He tugs against the net one last time, futile though he knows it to be, before finally succumbing to the blissful siren song of unconsciousness.

* * *

 

“Dibs on the boat!”

Virgil snatches for the keys, but Thomas holds them above his head, laughing. “No, Virgil, you’re on the beach.”

“I was on the beach last time!” Virgil pouts. He hates doing the beach part of storm patrol, because it’s just walking up and down the shoreline and looking for injured animals, which is important but boring. Usually, the only things you encounter are chunks of seaweed and the occasional dead jellyfish. (They _can_ still sting you, Virgil has discovered, and he remains paranoid even though he was only stung the once.) 

“True, but I did your water samples yesterday so you could go look at the storm,” Thomas reminds him, still smiling. “Plus, you don’t actually have a boating license.”

“I have _never_ been accosted by an officer of the law demanding my license to operate a boat _in my life_ ,” Virgil argues, still jumping to grab at the keys. 

“And today won’t be the first time,” Thomas says. “You’re on the beach.” He hasn’t stopped smiling, but his _I-am-the-doctor-here_ tone is starting to creep in, and Virgil knows the argument is a lost cause. He still heaves a loud, dramatic sigh, dropping into the kitchen chair and staring down into his coffee cup. 

“Fine,” he groans, shoving his nose into his mug to inhale the scent of bitter, extra-strength-caffeinated death. (He suspects that if he were to try and take a blood sample from his arm, it would be coffee, and not blood, but Doctor Sanders refuses to let him test the theory.) “How much do you wanna bet I can down this entire thing in one go?”

The mug is two-thirds full and scalding hot.

“You’re going to burn your mouth off,” Thomas says. “I don’t recommend it.”

Virgil swills the mug around, letting the liquid slosh dangerously close to the rim. “I’m gonna _For Science_ it.” 

“No!” Thomas yelps, whirling around. “No, do _not_ For Science it, Virgil, that is _not_ what _For Science_ -ing something means!”

Virgil smirks at him. “I’m gonna _For Science_ it.”

“No, you’re going to hurt yourself,” Thomas says, hand on the freezer door. Virgil makes eye contact with him, raises the mug at him in a toast, and throws his head back, pulling the mug up with it. Thomas was right, it is far too hot, but he refuses to back down from a challenge (that he issued himself). He slams the empty mug against the table triumphantly, grins at Thomas for all of fifteen seconds, and then immediately opens his mouth and starts fanning it frantically.

Thomas sets a small bowl full of ice cubes on the table (and not for the first time, Virgil is thankful that he has a doctoral mentor who’s so used to his specific brand of shenanigans). Virgil shoves two ice cubes into his mouth and clamps down, hard, letting the chill seep across his tongue and gums. “Fanks,” he mutters around the ice. 

“If you get a brain freeze trying to stave off the coffee burn, I will not pity you,” Thomas deadpans.

“You’re such a good advisor, Thomas.” 

“I advised you not to do that, Virgil, and you did it anyway.”

Virgil flips him off and shoves another ice cube into his mouth. 

He pulls on his _I-look-like-a-nineteen-eighties-dockworker_ clothing, which consists of a woolen purple sweater, weird waterproof overall things, and waterproof rubber boots that come up to his knees. “You just don’t wanna wear this stupid outfit.”

“The only person bothered by that outfit is you, Virgil.” Thomas is wearing jeans and a windbreaker, and Virgil briefly considers just setting him on fire. Thomas tugs a black beanie onto his head and throws a purple one at Virgil.

“You know, I said my favorite color was purple _one time_ ,” he grumbles. “You didn’t have to make _all of my clothes purple_.” Thomas doesn’t respond, and Virgil tugs the beanie on anyway. He’s a doctoral student, he doesn’t really have the budget to be complaining about well-made, weatherproof clothing provided to him by the same man who employs, houses, and feeds him, and he’s pretty sure Thomas knows that, too.

Thomas, unlike Virgil, is far too nice to intentionally lord that over Virgil, but there are times, like right now, when he feels particularly lorded over.

“I won’t go too far offshore, alright? If you need anything, radio me.” Thomas’s eyes are solemn and concerned as he carefully grips Virgil’s shoulders. In the beginning, storm patrol would have taken all day, with the two of them combing the beach all morning and being out on the open water until well past sunset. Now, barring a major disaster, they could potentially return in time to have a proper sit-down lunch. Virgil’s proven that he can handle himself alone, in the lab and in the field, but it doesn’t stop Thomas from worrying. 

(Privately, Virgil’s not sure that he ever wants Thomas to stop worrying. It’s kind of nice, knowing someone gives a damn whether you wind up a corpse or not.)

“I’m not a beginner, Thomas, I know what I’m doing.”

“I know that,” Thomas says, and he means it. “I just – I worry about you, you know?”

“I know that,” Virgil says, and he means it. “I worry about you, too. Make sure that you wear a life vest – I know you usually don’t, but the sea’s still choppy and I know you can swim but if you end up overboard in that –”

“Who’s the student here, Virge?” Thomas laughs. He swipes Virgil’s beanie off his head to ruffle his hair, and Virgil swats at his hand and snatches his hat back. “Seriously, though, I know. It’s okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t.” Virgil checks the contents of his backpack, making sure he still has everything in it that he’s supposed to. He hasn’t touched this pack since last storm patrol, and he always restocks it afterwards, but _better safe than sorry_ has been his motto for a long time and it hasn’t failed him yet.

Thomas tucks his ears underneath his hat, watching as Virgil sets his backpack aside and unlatches the chest they keep the boat supplies on, brushing flaking red paint chips from his fingers. “Take some water samples while you’re out, alright? The tide pools should be full again after the pounding we took last night.”

“Are you taking deep-sea readings, too?” Virgil asks, fingers skimming over the contents of the chest.

“Yes, but you only need to analyze the tide pool samples. I’ll handle the ones I collect off the boat.” Virgil locks up the chest again, throws his backpack on, and hoists the tool chest up in his arms.

“Sounds good to me, Doc.” 

“I can take that, you know,” Thomas says, pocketing the keys.

“I’ve got it,” Virgil dismisses. He really doesn’t; the chest by itself isn’t too heavy, and the backpack by itself isn’t too heavy, but together it’s just a little bit more than he can stand. “Let’s go!”

He makes it all the way down to the dock, staggering the last few feet under the weight, but he finally, finally heaves the chest onto the boat and drops to his knees, breathing heavily. “You definitely should have let me take that,” Thomas comments, swinging over the side of the boat. Virgil stands up and walks around the boat, checking the scientific instruments and equipment to make sure that everything is where it should be. 

“I’m an experienced mariner, Virgil, and unlike you, I actually _do_ have a boating license. I’ll be okay.” Virgil rubs at his eyes with the rough sleeve of his sweater. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you’re gonna be okay, I just – worry.” 

Thomas’s eyes soften, and he sets his hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “I know, Virgil. But I’m going to be fine, and so are you. You’ve got the radio, right?” Virgil taps the boxy black rectangle hanging from his hip. “Alright. Call if you find something, okay?” 

“Same to you,” Virgil says, and then he hops onto the dock and starts the long, boring trek down the beach. It’s private, about a mile long, and Virgil is thankful that there are still clouds crowding around the sky to block the sun’s harsh glare. 

The second Thomas is out of sight, he grabs his phone out of his pocket and fishes out his earbuds. Thomas discourages him from listening to music while he’s out of the lab, but Virgil is _not_ spending his morning wandering around a beach without any entertainment.

He only puts one earbud in, careful to make sure he can listen for anything untoward on the beach or Thomas’s voice on the radio. Virgil scrolls through his playlists until he finds “FUCKING BEACHCOMBING” and hits _shuffle_.

Virgil’s not taking a Sunday stroll, but he isn’t sprinting, either. He keeps pace with the songs on his playlist, measuring his steps in time to the beat of whatever’s playing. They’re all relatively fast ones, and he’s making good time. He finds a couple of stranded starfish and sand dollars, and after examining them to make sure that they’re relatively uninjured, he tosses them back into the ocean. He does find one starfish that’s missing an arm, and he knows it’ll grow back but he can’t help worrying about it.

He fills a small plastic carrier with seawater and gently lays the starfish inside, snapping the lid shut and hanging it off his shoulder from the retractable strap. “There you go, little buddy. We’ll take you back to the lab and fix you up, okay? Or, well, we won’t fix you up, but we’ll let you fix _yourself_ up through regeneration and I am _rambling_ and – I’m talking to a _fucking_ starfish.”

The starfish, mercifully, doesn’t respond.

Virgil’s about three-quarters of the way down the beach when he sees it – a large, prone figure, stranded on the sand. Virgil can see the glint of the net in the weak sunlight, and then he’s running. He grabs the box with the starfish to steady it as he sprints down the beach, sliding his free hand into his pocket to pause his music. He tears his earbud out and shoves it into his pocket, setting the starfish’s box down and grabbing the radio.

He crouches down next to whatever it is, and he forgets how to work the radio, forgets how to speak, forgets how to _breathe_ , because it’s not an animal in the net at all, and Virgil is going to be sick.

Lying in front of him is a young man who looks about Virgil’s age, unconscious. His face is twisted in pain, and he’s shivering, His hair is matted to his forehead with seawater and sweat (and blood, it looks like). There are matching scars on either side of his neck and weird blue patches covering the upper half of his face and his forearms, with what looks like fins protruding off his elbows. There’s a band of lighter blue around his left bicep, and it looks suspiciously like scales.

Virgil’s eyes trail down his torso (notedly shirtless and not terrible-looking), and he’s preparing himself to avert his eyes when he reaches this guy’s bare ass, but the dark blue of his face and arms starts up again around his waist, thickening and darkening along his . . . lower half.

 _Call a spade a spade,_ Virgil thinks. _His tail_.

The tail is sleek and elegant, midnight blue with darker ring-shaped patches. There are shark-like fins jutting out from his spine, and another pair curving out from the side. The tail tapers and splits off into a broad pair of fins, only visible as the most recent wave recedes. Another breaker crashes downs, and it begins to pull the – _say it Virgil, you know what he is_ – the injured merman farther into the ocean.

“Oh, shit, no, come here buddy,” Virgil says. He reaches out, but stops short when he sees the net. It’s _everywhere_ , thick chain-link metal wrapped so tightly he’s surprised it hasn’t cut off circulation, pinning the merman’s arms to his sides and forcing his tail into what must be an unnatural bent position. It’s wrapped around his neck, too, and only the slight rise and fall of his chest lets Virgil know he’s still alive. 

The net is covered in what look like metal thorns, sharp, curved triangles piercing his arms and his torso and his tail. The waves have cleared some of the blood, but there’s plenty of it dried on his skin, and judging by the slightly discolored veins leading away from each puncture wound, the thorns probably contained some sort of toxin. It would explain a lot, like the unnatural pallor of his face and the erratic shakiness of his breathing.

Virgil searches for somewhere he can touch that’s the least likely to get him stabbed accidentally so that he can pull the merman to safety. His hands have barely brushed against the merman’s shoulder when he jolts awake, eyes wide and frantic. He gasps in a deep, shaking breath, and Virgil’s ninety percent sure that those are fangs in his mouth.

“Hey, whoa, what – are you –”

The merman whips his head around, and his panicked expression quickly morphs into rage. He snarls at Virgil ( _YEP THOSE ARE DEFINITELY FANGS ABORT ABORT ABORT_ ), and Virgil sees something spark on his tail and smells something smoky in the air. Another wave crashes down onto the merman, and Virgil scrambles backwards and up onto dry sand just as the merman releases a burst of electricity.

It crackles and sizzles through the water, and Virgil shoves his face into his elbow to shield his eyes. When he looks up again, there are a few rogue sparks skittering across the merman’s tail, but most of the electricity has dissipated. The discharge seems to have left the merman even weaker than he was before, and Virgil sets the starfish’s container and his backpack down before pulling on the thick rubber gloves that he uses to handle jellyfish and pufferfish and other such creatures. 

He approaches cautiously, holding his hands up palms-out in a gesture of surrender. The merman bares his teeth, and Virgil stops a few feet away, still safely out of the water. Electricity arcs off his arm, but it’s barely there, and the merman winces as he shifts to meet Virgil’s eyes.

“Hey, I’m – I’m not gonna hurt you, man. You’re already hurt, and – and it’s gonna get worse if you stay out here on this beach. You might die, and I’m not – I can’t leave you here. Can you let me help you? Please?” 

The merman narrows his eyes, and tries to move again, but he agitates three of the spikes in doing so and cries out. Virgil’s no bleeding heart, but Thomas must be softening him, because it hurts him to hear that. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I promise. I just want to help you. I want to get you out of that net, because I think you and I both know that you can’t get out on your own.”

The merman watches him warily as he approaches, but there’s something else in his eyes – something weary. Virgil carefully grabs the merman’s shoulders, making sure he’s not applying pressure to any of the barbs in his skin, and carefully pulls him further up the beach. The barbs in his tail and torso must be digging in and hurting him, but he doesn’t make any noise of complaint, just winces and bites his lower lip. 

Virgil sets him down, carefully, and reaches for the radio. The merman growls, low and hesitant. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m just going to call my friend, okay? He’s a doctor, he can help you.”

The merman closes his eyes and lowers his head to the sand, a soft whine coming from his throat. He doesn’t protest, so Virgil sweeps his thumb over the radio and turns it on.

“Doctor Sanders. Come in, Doctor Sanders.” 

The radio crackles, a sharp squeal of static that makes Virgil and the merman wince. 

“I’m here, Virge! Did you find something?”

Virgil scans his eyes over the injured merman. “That’s one word for it. I’m about three-quarters of the way down the beach. How fast can you bring the boat around?”

“Send me your coordinates and I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“Roger that. And Thomas?" 

“Yeah?”

“You might wanna put on your rubber gloves.”


	2. great waves looked over others coming in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I KNOW THIS TOOK A WHILE I'M SORRY I HOPE YOU ENJOY we're getting through a lot of expositional stuff atm but hopefully it flows more smoothly now)  
> chapter tw: injury mention, blood mention, needle mention, anxiety/panic attacks (not super detailed), drug mentions

Thomas, to his credit, takes the news a lot better than Virgil had.

He doesn’t even seem _remotely_ surprised by the fact that Virgil has found, almost been electrocuted by, conversed with, sympathized with, and semi-rescued a half-human fish person. The second his feet hit the beach, he’s all business, snapping the rubber gloves on with practiced expertise as he crouches beside Virgil.

“This doesn’t look good,” he says, 

“Understatement of the century, Doc.” 

The merman makes a strangled hissing noise when Thomas approaches, but he doesn’t even flinch. On anyone else, Virgil would see this as foolhardy bravery. On Thomas, he can’t see it as anything but compassion. “Hey, there, bud. You’ve gotten yourself into a right mess, haven’t you?” Thomas smiles, soft and reassuring, and Virgil is flashing back to college. “I’m here to help you. Can I touch this net?” 

The merman nods, wincing as the net scrapes against his neck. Thomas very, very carefully slides one finger between the merman’s skin and the net, and lifts it up just a little to examine it more closely. “Some asshole is about to get their boat graffiti-ed to hell,” Virgil snarls. Thomas shakes his head. 

“No, Virgil.”

“You can’t stop me!” Virgil snaps. “They wanted to make more money bringing in more fish and they – they injure –” He’s too angry to form proper words, so he just flings his arms out as he gestures to the merman. “He would be dead if it wasn’t for me! For us! He still might die on us!” The merman’s eyes widen at that, and he looks terrified. 

“He’s not going to die,” Thomas says. His voice is steady, but Virgil can see the barest tell-tale tremor in his hands and the tiniest tightness of his jaw. “Everything is going to be okay. We need to get him back to the lab, we need to get this net off of him, we need –” His voice dies off as he examines one of the metal barbs.  

“Thomas?” Virgil asks, because he knows that look, the _I-can’t-believe-my-eyes-am-I-really-seeing-this_ look. It’s usually accompanied by starry-eyed wonder, but the look in Thomas’s eyes right now is closer to horror. Thomas leans in, tilts his head and the barb so that he can see it more clearly without hurting the merman even more. “What did you find?”

“These things, they’re hollow,” Thomas says. “And the tips, they look like – like _needles_ , almost.  I think he’s been drugged.” 

“Drugged?”

“Yeah, probably with some kind of neurotoxin. Can’t be sure without analyzing a blood sample, but I think the priority is getting him off this beach and the net off of him.” Thomas is all business now. “We’re going to have to pick him up.” He’s incredibly nonchalant, and Virgil is so close to losing his mind.

“Aren’t you the _least bit_ freaked out by all this?” Virgil hisses. “He has a _tail_! And _fins_! This has to be some kind of mass hallucination, right? There’s no way there’s a _merman_ on our _fucking beach_!”

Thomas makes eye contact, something wild and unfamiliar glimmering there. “Virgil, I don’t know what’s happening here,” he says, and there’s a high frantic note to his voice that Virgil usually hears in his own. “I don’t understand anything that’s happening. This does not make the _remotest modicum of sense_ to me as a scientist. But as a person, I know that he – he?”

Thomas looks at the merman, who looks back at him in confusion. “Are you a he?” Thomas asks, and the merman nods, carefully, looking stunned. (Leave it to Thomas, in the middle of a crisis of beliefs, to make sure he’s getting a merperson’s pronouns right. Virgil kind of loves his boss.) “Good. I know that _he_ is in a lot of pain right now, and we can do something about it. We can’t let whoever set this net find him, because I have a feeling they won’t be nearly as kind.”

Virgil nods, and Thomas turns back to the merman. “We need to move you off of the beach. We have a boat, and we’re going to get you onto the deck of that boat and take you back to our lab so we can help you.” The merman nods, eyes half-open and cloudy, and Virgil is worried.

It’s an experience, trying to figure out how to get the merman off the beach. Any movement pushes the barbs deeper into the merman’s skin, and neither of them are wearing clothing strong enough to protect themselves from getting stabbed should they try to pick him up. “It would probably be easiest,” Thomas speculates, “to get him onto the boat, sail back to the dock, and get him to the lab from there.” 

“How do you propose we get him onto the boat?” Virgil asks.

“Well, I used the dinghy to get here. I figure we load him onto that and drive out to the boat.”

“And then what?” Virgil challenges, and he’s starting to get agitated. “How are we gonna get him onto the boat from the dinghy? Hell, how are we getting him _onto the dinghy in the first place?_ We can’t exactly pick him up without hurting him or us! And he seems pretty sentient, Thomas, can we really just take him? Isn’t that kidnapping? This – this entire thing is just unknown variables and we can’t just _leave him here_ or he’s gonna die but there’s still something _fundamentally wrong_ about –” 

“Virgil.” Thomas grips his shoulders, and Virgil curls his hands into fists, reflexively, hoping that if he squeezes hard enough he can squeeze the tension right out of his body. “Virgil, you need to take a breath. Breathe.”

“I’m breathing, Thomas, I’d be dead if I wasn’t breathing.” He’s harsher than he means to be.

“A deep breath, Virge. You’re panicking.”

“I’m not panicking,” Virgil snaps. Thomas looks unconvinced, but he doesn’t call Virgil out on it.

“Alright,” he says instead, voice neutral. “You’re not panicking. You wanna take some deep breaths with me anyway?” Virgil does not want to take a deep breath. Virgil wants to find whoever strung that net up and caught this merman and he wants to _beat the living shit out of them_.

“Whatever,” he mutters, staring at Thomas’s chest so intently he’s surprised he doesn’t burn a hole in it. Thomas rubs his thumbs back and forth in sweeping, even strokes. He inhales through his nose, slowly, holds his breath, and then blows it out his mouth in a measured stream, marking the time off with the movement of his fingers. Virgil watches him do it, chest still heaving with anger. Thomas raises an eyebrow.

“You have to breathe with me, Virgil, or it’s not gonna work.”

Virgil knows this. If he takes deep breaths now, he’s going to release all of his anger, and he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to hold onto it – he’s angry about the merman’s shitty situation, and he wants to _stay_ angry so he can go do something about it later. But Thomas is looking at him, and Virgil relents because Thomas is right. Staying angry will feel good in the moment, but it won’t actually enable him to do anything useful.

Thomas finishes his exhale, and when he inhales again, Virgil joins him. They breathe together four or five times, until the tension has drained from Virgil’s shoulders and his hands aren’t shaking as much. “Okay. Good. That’s good, Virgil,” Thomas praises, and Virgil feels his cheeks warm slightly. “We need to get him onto the dinghy without stabbing ourselves or worsening his injuries.”

Virgil nods. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay, cool cool cool. How do we do that?” He knows he’s rambling a little, but Thomas doesn’t seem to mind. “I’d say pick him up but –”

“Yeah, that might not be the best idea,” Thomas says. “Unless . . . okay, let’s try this. I’m going to grab his torso. You grab his tail, and we’ll carry him together. We’ll worry about getting him onto the boat when we get to the boat. One step at a time, okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Virgil breathes, adjusting his gloves. He pulls his backpack on as Thomas carefully slides his hands under the merman’s arms, checking the box where the starfish sits to make sure it’s okay. Thomas is explaining what they’re doing to the merman in a low, soothing voice as Virgil carefully repositions himself at the merman’s tail. 

“Okay, Virgil, your turn.” Virgil hesitantly, hesitantly touches the shimmering tail, gathering as much as he can into his arms. Briefly, idly, he wonders what it would feel like to run his bare fingers along the scales, to ghost his fingertips along the delicate fins along the side. 

“Ready?” Thomas calls.

“Ready.”

“And in three, two, _one_!” Thomas and Virgil lift at the same time, and the merman comes up off the sand. He’s heavier than he looks, and his tail is slick and smooth; Virgil can barely keep hold of it. He almost drops him, but manages to regain his grip by hooking his fingers into the net. The merman groans when he tugs on the spikes.

“I’m sorry,” Virgil winces. “We’re only trying to help you.” He takes careful steps backwards as Thomas walks forwards, staggering to where the dinghy is propped in the sand. Virgil glances behind him as he steps into the tiny dinghy, sitting on the oar bench as he carefully coils the merman’s tail on the floor. The bends cause some of the barbs to dig in deeper, to shift position and tear slightly bigger holes, and Virgil winces. “Does this hurt?” 

The merman shakes his head, despite his pained expression. Thomas steps into the boat, sits down, allows the merman’s head and torso to rest in his lap. The merman watches Virgil carefully, with suspicious, tired eyes, and Virgil does his best to smile reassuringly. He’s still uneasy about just taking a sentient being, but he’d be more uneasy about leaving him on the beach to die – because he _would_ die, without them.

(Virgil doesn’t know that for certain, of course, but it’s highly likely, and it’s all he has to reconcile his cognitive dissonance right now.)

“Vee?” Thomas says, and _shit_ he’s been talking the whole time. Virgil’s 

“Mmm-yes-sorry-what?” Thomas doesn’t snap at him, just repeats himself gently.

“I said, I’m going to shove off now, okay? You’ll have to row, you’re closer to the oars than I am.”

“Y-yeah, sure thing, Doc. I’m on it.”

Thomas grabs one of the oars, digs it into the sand, and pushes, hard. The dinghy lurches forward, and the merman flinches at the sudden movement. “It’s okay,” Virgil soothes. “It’s okay. You – you’re okay. Well, you’re probably not right _now_ , but – but you will be.” Thomas grunts and shoves again, and the dinghy shudders as it scrapes against the sea floor. The merman opens his mouth, but closes it again without making any noise.

Thomas finally shoves them fully off, and Virgil hooks both the oars into their holders. He leans into the strokes, long and smooth, and pulls them through the breakers. Thomas keeps a firm grip on the shaking merman as Virgil rows them towards the boat. It’s anchored a fair distance away, but Virgil is strong, and they make it in no time. 

“So, how are we getting into the boat, again?” Virgil asks. Thomas grabs the chain of the anchor with one hand to keep the dinghy in place, keeping the merman steady with the other. “I mean, I know how _we’re_ getting into the boat, but what about _him_?” He jerks his head at the merman.

Thomas weighs the options in his head. “Well, I think what we’re going to have to do is have somebody climb up the chain into the boat and lower the cables we use to lift the dinghy in and out of the boat. Whoever’s still in the dinghy can attach the cables, and we’ll let the winch do the rest of the work.”  
  
“Okay, sounds good, but who’s climbing the chain?” Thomas raises an eyebrow. Virgil pales. “Oh no. No. No way. No, absolutely not! I am _not –”_  
  
“Well, seeing as _I_ have most of an injured merman in my lap and _your_ lap is conveniently free, I’m guessing it _has_ to be you.”  
  
Virgil glares at his boss. “I hate you sometimes. You know that, right? I really, _really_ hate you.”

Thomas just smirks at him, and Virgil regrets every single life choice that has led him to this moment in time. He adjusts his backpack straps and carefully steps over the merman’s tail, wincing every time the tip of his boot so much as grazes the delicate scales. The merman watches him, unblinking like a cat. Virgil is kind of unnerved by the stare, but he doesn’t know enough about merman biology to know if the merman is trying to intimidate him or if he just doesn’t need to blink as much as humans do (or at all).

He tugs his gloves a little more firmly over his hands before he grips the chain. “What if I don’t have the upper body strength for this?” he says. “I could fall off and into the ocean! Or I could land in the dinghy and crush you both! _Or –_ ”

“Virgil, just climb the damn boat already.”

“If I die trying to do this, I’m going to haunt you until you die, and then I’m going to follow your ghost around forever.”

“It’s not even that far! Or that dangerous!”

“ _Says the guy who gets to sit perfectly still and not climb the boat chain!_ ”

Virgil plants his feet against the hull of the boat and pulls himself forward on the anchor chain as he walks up the side of the boat. It’s slippery with barnacles and sea spray, and he presses his feet against the unyielding metal to the best of his ability. The thick links of the chain hurt his hands, despite the insulated gloves, but he manages to pull himself over the side of the boat and collapse on the deck. 

“You good up there, Virgil?”  
  
“Virgil cannot be reached for comment. Please leave your message after the tone. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee –”

“Virgil, stop dicking around! We need you to lower the cables! He’s getting worse!”

Virgil pushes himself to his feet, discards his backpack, and scrambles for the winch cable. “Cables incoming in three, two, _one_!” He pulls the lever down as hard as he can, sending the cables spiraling down towards the dinghy.

“Got ‘em!” Thomas calls. Virgil leans over the side of the boat to watch Thomas carefully attaching the hooks to the sides of the dinghy. It sways precariously on a particularly choppy swell, and Virgil sucks in a gasp when it lists so sharply that Thomas and the merman almost fall into the ocean.

“Doc, be careful!” 

“We’re good, Virge,” Thomas says, but it’s strained, and he attaches the final cables more quickly. “But, uh, if you could pull us up now, that’d be amazing!” Virgil sprints to the switchboard and shifts the lever back, slowly, reeling the dinghy up. Once Thomas is close enough, he shifts the merman around so that he’s propped as comfortably as he can manage.

Virgil holds a hand out to help Thomas onto the boat, pulling him into a brief, tight hug once his feet are firmly on the deck. “I’m good, kiddo,” Thomas says, hugging him back. Virgil shoves away from him, face red.

“This never happened!”  
  
“Sure, Virgil.”  
  
“I’m _serious_! You speak of this to _no one_!”  
  
“Virgil, the only person I talk to on an even semi-regular basis is you.”  
  
“Exactly! Do not even mention this to me! Now help me get the merman into the boat!”

Together, they manage to hoist the dinghy onto the deck. Thomas slips on the slick floor at one point and they almost drop it, but Virgil digs his heels in and grits his teeth until Thomas finally manages to regain his footing. The dinghy screeches as it slides across the deck, and the merman whines in pain. “I’m going to hop on the controls,” Thomas says. Virgil is bent over, hands on his knees, panting, but he manages a thumbs-up. “Stay with him – the toxin’s still in his system and it’s getting worse.”

Virgil sits down hard next to the dinghy, draping his arms over the side and casually resting his head to stare at the merman. The merman stares back at him, eyes half-open and cloudy. His hair is plastered to his forehead with seawater and sweat and blood. Virgil reaches a hand towards the merman before he knows what he’s doing.

A low, guttural growl echoes from the merman, and he snaps at Virgil. His teeth, while still humanoid, are longer and sharper than any human’s. He lacks the mobility to reach Virgil’s hand, but Virgil still flinches away. “Whoa, dude, relax! I’m just trying to help you!”

The merman snarls out a low, garbled string of something vaguely approximate to human speech. Virgil takes a deep breath and tries not to panic. “Listen, I’m just gonna try and move some of your hair off your forehead, okay?” He peels his gloves off, carefully; the net hasn’t wrapped around the merman’s head and he wants to be as careful as he can.

Virgil moves his fingers closer to the merman, slowly, giving him plenty of opportunity to lean away if he doesn’t want to be touched. The merman is wary, hesitant. Suspicious. Virgil would expect this from a wild animal, but the merman is clearly capable of a higher level of thought; even if he doesn’t appear to speak English, he understands it at the very least. He kind of wants to be offended, but then, he’d almost assuredly react the same way in this situation, except more violent and with a lot more cursing.

His fingertips are scant centimeters from the merman’s forehead. “You, uh, you can tell me to stop if you want. Well, I mean, I don’t know if you can _tell me_ tell me, I don’t know if you speak English but I think you – you answered Doctor Sanders like you knew what he was saying so, uh, um, I – fuck it, is this okay?”

The merman blinks at him, and then carefully nods. Virgil exhales and closes the gap, letting his fingertips rest on the fine blue scales clustered around the upper half of his face. They’re not slimy, like Virgil had expected them to be (for some reason). They are slightly damp, but then, the merman’s entire body is slightly damp. They’re lustrous in the weak sunlight, smooth like sea glass, and Virgil carefully traces his fingers along them, forgetting what he was doing. The merman whines, and Virgil stops, worrying he’s hurt him. But his expression doesn’t telegraph pain; if Virgil didn’t know better, he’d think he was smiling. 

It’s a good expression for him.

Virgil slides his fingers between the shining scales on his forehead and the strands of hair and carefully teases them apart. The merman does wince a little when he has to tug particularly hard, but eventually he can smooth the bangs back off of his forehead in one clean stroke. The merman looks at him, opens his mouth to reveal his needle-teeth again, and Virgil wonders if he’s accidentally made some kind of massive fuck up and is about to lose a finger.

Instead, to his shock and surprise, the merman rasps, “Thank you,” in perfect English, and then his eyes close completely. Virgil touches his face, but he doesn’t open his eyes again.

“Hey! Hey, buddy, c’mon, no, you can’t go to sleep! You – you gotta – _Thomas you gotta step on it!_ ” The merman’s chest is still rising and falling, but it’s getting shallower. His face contorts in pain, and the poison-darkened veins leading away from every place where a barb digs into his skin become even darker against his paling skin.

Virgil keeps his hand on the merman’s forehead as Thomas speeds up, hoping that he won’t be watching a corpse when they dock.

* * *

 

The sea is quiet. The sea is dark. The sea is not still.

There is the barest flash of movement, the slightest glimmer of red against the inky darkness of the deeper waters. Something slices through the water, graceful but strong, determined and afraid. A guttural clicking bounces off the cliffs, a singular repetitive pattern. It almost sounds like a name. There are pauses between the clicks, as though whatever’s making them is listening for a reply. But no reply comes, and the clicking gets more frantic. 

Far below, something luminous writhes around the cliffs, long and large and serpentine. The same pattern echoes through the rock spires and hydrothermal vents, with the same pauses for response. But no response comes. The clicks pick up in urgency, but they still remain unanswered.

A flash of red. A gleam of blue. They twine around each other easily, the kind of ease that can only be achieved by decades of experience, and new clicking patterns echo through the water.

_Did you find him?!_

**_No, nothing. You?_ **

_No! We’ve looked everywhere, where could he possibly be?!_

**_I don’t know!_ ** ****

_The ocean is_ so huge _, what if we never find him?_  
  
**You can’t think like that! We’re going to find him!**

_We might not! Or – or what if we find him but he’s – he’s –_

**_He’s still alive, and we ARE going to find him!_ **

_And if we don’t? I – I don’t know if I can live with myself if we never find him, or we find him and he’s dead, because it was all my fault!_

**_Hey. Stop. It absolutely was not –_ **

_He swam off because of something I said! Now he’s gone!_

**_Just calm down, okay? We – we have to call it a night._ ** ****

_No! We haven’t found him yet! We can’t give up!_

**_We’re not giving up, we’re taking a break. We need to sleep._ **

_You sleep then! I’m not going to stop until we find him!_  
  
**And what happens if you get hurt because you’re reckless and sleep-deprived? Or worse? Are you really going to let me lose my entire pod in one fell swoop?** ****

_I . . ._

**_Take a rest, please. I can’t lose anyone else._ **

_I . . . I didn’t think . . . I’m sorry, I –_

**_It’s alright. I understand. I’m worried too. But we have to sleep, okay? We have to come at this fresh. Come on, come here._ ** ****

_If you insist._

The sea is dark. The sea is silent.

The sea is not still.

* * *

 

Thomas narrows his eyes in concentration, carefully tugging another barb out of the merman’s tail. They’re shaped kind of like shark teeth, triangular and jagged but with hollow, hooked barbs on the ends. It’s the last barb he needs to remove to peel this section of netting off and drop it into the bin with the rest. 

They’d had to break the net into pieces with bolt cutters. Virgil’s immediate reaction had been to simply yank at the net, but the merman had actually screamed at that as the barbs caught in his flesh and dug in deeper. The scream was painfully human, but with a grating, harsh undertone that is decidedly otherworldly. Virgil had backed off immediately and even now refuses to approach the lab table. Thomas has been carefully unhooking the injectors from the merman’s body on his own, starting with the neck and working his way down. 

The netting around the neck is the first thing to go.

They get lucky; not all of the barbs have pierced the skin, and some are dented and empty but some still contain their full dose of neurotoxin. Thomas pries them out and empties their contents into test tubes and passes a rack of them to Virgil for analysis. He’s doing this because his chemical expertise far outstrips Thomas’s, but it also makes a handy excuse for him to stay away from the table.

His hands are shaking when he takes the test tube rack. “You didn’t know,” Thomas says. “it isn’t your fault.”  
  
Virgil smiles, briefly, once, just a quick quirk of the corners of his mouth, no warmth in it and no light in his eyes. He’s barely looked up from the microscope since, aside from making the occasional note or searching through the occasional book. Thomas is worried about him, but he’s more worried about how shallow this merman’s pulse is.

He finishes de-netting the merman’s human half, and after performing a few quick tests to establish the mobility of his arms and hands and fingers, Thomas takes a bottle of antiseptic and a package of cotton pads typically used for makeup removal and starts carefully wiping at the cuts, gently scrubbing the dried blood off and making sure the cuts are as clean as possible. The skin and muscle around the cuts is beginning to bruise, and Thomas suspects this is going to be a long, painful recovery.

“He’ll be okay,” Virgil says, quietly.  
  
“What?”  
  
“The neurotoxin.” Virgil spins his chair around, goggles over his eyes, a few tufts of dark hair pinned against his pale forehead. “It’s not nearly as bad as we thought. It’s designed to slow you down, to make your head foggy so you can’t think straight – well, I never think straight, but anyway, it’s got a chemical composition that the liver can degrade pretty easily. It should work out of his system by sometime tonight.”

“That’s a relief,” Thomas sighs. “Come and help me bandage these.”

Virgil balks. “Um, no, I’d – rather not, thanks.”  
  
Thomas narrows his eyes. “Virge, I need the help. There’s a lot of cuts here, and I’d prefer to get the rest of this netting off as soon as possible.”  
  
“I said no,” Virgil repeats, a little more firmly. Thomas narrows his eyes at him. He could always force Virgil to help him; technically speaking, Virgil is his research assistant. He can give orders, and Virgil has yet to disobey one of those.  But there’s something guilty in Virgil’s eyes, although his denial remains firm.  
  
“Why not?”

“I’m . . . uncomfortable.”  
  
“With what, the blood? I thought that didn’t bother you.”  
  
“It doesn’t.”  
  
“Is it the needles? I promise not to take any more out until we’re done with this.”  
  
“I really, really don’t want to go anywhere near him.”  
  
“He needs help, Virgil.” 

“Yeah, and I already hurt him,” Virgil snaps, and _there_ it is. There’s the reason for his hesitance. Thomas sighs, a little exasperated, but relieved to have an explanation nonetheless. “I’m not doing that again.”  
  
“It was an accident, Virgil. If you hadn’t done it, I would have. We didn’t know the barbs were designed like that. They were literally built to cause as much harm as possible. It could have just as easily been me.”  
  
“But it _wasn’t_ you. It was me. And my hands are still shaking, I’ve almost spilled my samples six times already.” Virgil unlatches the little plastic box he’d brought back from the beach and examines the starfish inside. He carefully dumps the starfish into what Thomas has affectionately dubbed the “touch tank”, a shallow glass tank for tide-pool-dwelling creatures that a child would probably pet. “I don’t wanna hurt him any further. Can – do you really need me?”  
  
“Well, I don’t think he’s going to need stitches,” Thomas says. “So, if you’re really _that_ uncomfortable, I should be okay.”  
  
“Thanks,” Virgil sighs. “And you’re better with medical stuff than I am anyway, Doc.”  
  
“You’re not wrong. Well, if you’re not gonna help with this, can you at least fill the tank? The biggest one – he’s not gonna be swimming for a while, but he needs all the space he can get.”  
  
“Yeah, ‘m on it.”

“Thanks, and Virgil?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t set the net. You didn’t try and trap him. You’ve been trying to save this poor guy since we found him. You _know_ this isn’t your fault, right?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, sure, I know.” Virgil is dismissive, hurrying across the lab to start adjusting the pump they use to fill the specimen rehabilitation tanks. The largest one they have runs from the floor to very near the high ceiling, a spiral of flat metal planks wrapping around it to lead up to the lid. They can fit a fully-grown dolphin in there easily – probably even two. The merman will be alright in there. The pump Virgil is operating pulls fresh seawater in so that they don’t have to worry about adjusting salinity, and there are grates over them specially designed by Virgil and Thomas so that they don’t suck in any errant sea creatures. 

The pump is very loud, and the merman groans at the noise. Virgil has his hands over his ears, watching the seawater swirl around within the reinforced Plexiglas. It’s oddly hypnotic, and would be soothing if it weren’t for the incessant shrieking, sucking, grating noise that accompanies it.

Thomas focuses on cleaning and bandaging the cuts. There are plenty of individual puncture wounds, but there are also longer, jagged scrapes where the barbs have caught and dragged across his torso. Thomas uses a roll and a half of his patented waterproof bandages before he’s done.

The last few cuts are odd, in that they are completely devoid of blood. They’re also perfectly even, two thin lines down each side of the merman’s neck. Thomas runs a clean finger down one of them, and suddenly they’re flaring open, flaps of skin peeling up to reveal clean pink muscle as the merman gasps. Thomas pulls his hand away sharply, and they lay flat again, and they look for all the world like clean scars again. 

“Gills?” Thomas asks. He shouldn’t really be surprised that they’re here – this _is_ an aquatic creature, and even though he seems to be able to breathe perfectly well out of the water he probably spends most of his life in it. Thomas carefully patches up the small wounds around the gills before he has a horrifying thought.

The netting was wrapped around the merman’s neck. The netting was holding his gills shut. _The merman would have drowned if he hadn’t been washed up on the beach when he did_.

It’s a thought that scares Thomas, the idea that he could be examining a corpse right now. He loves the ocean, spends his whole life studying it and understanding it and watching it, but there are so many times when it terrifies the life out of him. This is one of those times.

He manages to remove half the netting on the merman’s tail by the time the tank is full. Virgil turns the pump off, and the sudden absence of noise is jarring. He almost jerks his hands in surprise. (Thankfully, he manages to avoid doing so, which would have scored an even deeper mark into the glimmering blue tail beneath him).

“Tank’s prepped,” Virgil says, quietly. “Is . . . um, is there . . . do you still need help with the netting?”  
  
Thomas smiles; he knew Virgil would come around eventually.  
  
“Pull on some gloves first, Virgil. I’ll show you how to unhook the barbs without hurting him further, and then you can do that while I focus on the cuts, okay?” Virgil nods, snapping his thick rubber gloves around his wrists as he pulls them on. It’s a much quicker job with both of them, and soon they’re gently rolling the merman onto his back to attend to the injuries there. When they’re done, the merman’s tail is more white than blue, wrapped pretty thoroughly in stiff, waterproof bandages.

“Is he going to be able to swim?” Virgil asks.

“No, not at first,” Thomas responds. “Eventually? Yeah.”

Virgil exhales in relief. “Good. So, the tank?”  
  
Thomas coils as much of the merman’s tail as he can into his arms. It’s significantly less flexible than it was before, what with all of the bandaging and such, but he’s still able to sling a good deal of it over his shoulder and support the rest in his arms as Virgil fumbles with the torso. The merman’s head lolls back onto Virgil’s shoulder, head tilted slightly to the side, and Virgil’s face is pink.

Thomas files it away under _Things to Tease/Blackmail Virgil About Later_ (a list that he takes great pleasure in adding to) and starts towards the tank, carefully walking backwards on the balls of his feet. He insists on being the one who goes backwards up the stairs, even though it’s the dangerous part, and he can see the fear shining in Virgil’s eyes as he quietly directs Thomas’s steps.

When they reach the top, Virgil waits patiently while Thomas undoes the latch and slides the tank lid off. Carefully, slowly, they lower the merman in, tail first. He wakes up a little when he comes in contact with the cool water, enough to ease himself to the bottom of the tank. He curls his tail into a loose loop to the best of his ability, not unlike the way a snake would coil its body when sleeping. The stiff bandages make this difficult work, but he manages it anyway. 

He almost looks lost as he does it, like he’s looking for something (someone?) else, but he lays his torso down along the tail and closes his eyes, sliding into an exhausted sleep.  
  
Virgil disappears out of the lab, and Thomas goes and makes notes on one of the whiteboards, lists of questions he needs to ask and tests he wants to run. He wants blood samples, possibly one or two loose scales, and plenty of measurements, but he won’t take anything without the explicit consent of the merman. (He wonders if a name would be too much trouble; he doesn’t much fancy calling their guest “the merman” forever.) He seems to understand English well enough – does he speak it? Thomas adds that to his list of questions and then Virgil reappears.

Virgil is carrying his sketchbooks – the cheap, rough one, primarily full of stormy oceans, but also the thick leather-bound one with the good paper – as well as the shiny metallic case where he hoards his good colored pencils. He drags his office chair over to the tank, parking it where the stairs are out of the way to give himself an unobstructed view of the merman.

“See if you can make some guesstimates about the anatomy, hmm?” Thomas says. Virgil flips him off, but Thomas can see him sizing the merman up with his keen, over-analyzing artist’s eye. Virgil has always had an uncanny ability to guess the dimension of objects just by looking at them. “Thanks, Virgil.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, anything for you, Doc,” Virgil says dismissively, but Thomas catches the small, pleased smile on his face when he walks by and casually ruffles his hair.

(It’s buried in flustered, stammered curses and a bright red flush, but it’s there, and it’s enough to drag a smile out of Thomas, too.)

The merman sleeps on, oblivious.


	3. and thought of doing something to the shore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoy it!!!!! 
> 
> tw: anxiety, panic attack(s), injury mention, blood mention, eating mention

He wakes up cold and in pain.

Blinking, he slides his hands out, looking for someone else’s touch, someone else’s warmth, arms around his torso and a chin hooked over his shoulder, but he doesn’t find anyone. He sends out a sleepy, grumpy call – _Where are you?_ – but there’s no answer. He opens his eyes, and he can barely see anything. Everything is bright, too bright, and something is off, they never sleep in the photic zone – 

The events of yesterday hit him like a breaker, crashing into him, and he jerks his torso up, wincing when he pulls at his wounds. He examines himself (that, at least, he can see) to find that most of his arms and body and tail have been covered in some sort of white thing. A fungus, maybe? It’s stiff, and when he tries to bend his tail, it hurts a lot.

The last thing he remembers clearly is washing up on the beach. He doesn’t know where he is, and he doesn’t know how he got here, but he is very, very afraid. He calls again, higher-pitched and frantic – _Where are you?!_ – but the sound ricochets off something that’s far closer than it should be and slams into him. It hurts his head, and he screeches in pain, but that, too, bounces back to him and only makes his headache that much more agonizing.

He bites back a third scream, pressing his hands to his head to try and stop the pain pounding against his skull. He clicks experimentally, softly, and when the echo doesn’t make him want to tear his hair out, he sends out a few more. He gets a pretty clear picture of nothing – because there’s nothing there. 

He leans backwards and bumps into something cold and smooth. It’s not a rock, it can’t be, it’s too smooth. It feels like the sea glass they sometimes find along the seabed, and that tugs at his heart. A memory jumps into his brain: _light blue scales shining in the watery sunlight and rainbows rippling through the water and a shiny, sea-smoothed rock pressed into his hand, glimmering yellow and vaguely sea-star-shaped, and “it’s lucky, it’s a lucky star, so make a wish!” and he’d taken the sea glass but hadn’t wished because they don’t come true, and what he wouldn’t give to have that sea glass again to make a proper wish with, what he wouldn’t give to have them back –_

It hurts him to move, but move he does. He has to find out where he is. He has to find out where they are. He has to get back to them, he has to apologize, he has to beg for their forgiveness because he never wants to let them go ever again, not ever ever ever. He presses one hand against the smooth sea-glass wall and decides that he’s going to just follow it. From what he can tell, his tail is coiled on the sea bed, although it doesn’t feel much like a sea bed. It, too, is made of the sea-glass material, cold and smooth and hard, no sand or shells or seaweed or little crabs or sea urchins, no nothing. Just emptiness.

(It’s somewhat fitting, he thinks grimly, considering the emptiness circling around in his chest without his pod.)

He slides forward hesitantly, and when the pain is less intense than he thought it would be, he continues moving, carefully keeping one hand on the sea-glass wall as he all but drags himself forward. The sea-glass wall curves, and he follows it, and it’s only after what must be the fifth or sixth rotation that he realizes he’s been going in circles the entire time. That sends something spiking into the empty void that is his emotions right now.

He thinks it might be panic.

Whatever this sea-glass wall is, it’s keeping him confined. He tilts his head back and sends another soft click up, trying to gauge how far it is to the surface (whatever white stuff’s covering him hasn’t covered his gills yet, but he doesn’t want to risk getting caught with them pinned shut, not again). He counts how long it’s been since the click disappears, and flinches almost violently when it bounces back to him.

It shouldn’t be bouncing back to him. Why is it bouncing back to him?

He sends out another click, a little louder, and it hurts when it comes back but he doesn’t care. Another one, louder. Another, louder. Another, louder, another, louder, _another louder another louder because this has to be incorrect it can’t be right it can’t be it can’t be it can’t be there’s no way there’s no way there’s n **o way this is right –**_

There’s something above him. Something flat, and smooth, and keeping him confined. He’s trapped inside this sea-glass-smooth container, and as he presses against the wall, trying to figure out how pliable it is, another memory rises to the surface.

_Whatever you do, be wary of the humans. They catch fish to eat, just as we do, but they also catch live specimens, and keep them as attractions. Do not let them get their hands on you, because you are beautiful and rare, and if they catch you, they will never let you go again._

He’s been taken. He’s been taken by humans, and now he’s trapped in some kind of cave. He slams his hand against the sea-glass wall, wincing when the vibrations rippling through the water hurt his head. He has to get out of here. He has to get back to the sea, he has to get back to his pod, he has to get away.

The sea-glass wall is see-through, and as his vision clears itself, he can see blurry shapes beyond the wall, distorted by the water and the sea-glass and the headache ringing in his ears. He curls one hand into a fist, pulls back, and slams it as best he can against the wall. It hurts his hand, and it hurts his ears, and it hurts _him_ , but he pulls his hand back again anyway.

With every punch, he pulls an image into his mind, something that reminds him why he’s breaking his hand against an unbreakable wall.

 _Slam_.

He’s speeding through shallow water, weaving between rocks and coral reefs with practiced ease, and there’s someone on his tail laughing and shouting and telling him that he better slow down before he hits something but he isn’t listening, he’s going faster, faster, faster, always faster because this is just a game he can easily play, just a race he can easily win. He’s having fun, and he knows that he only has to stop and turn around and his pursuer will slam into him and tangle their tails together as he aggressively ruffles his hair.

 _Slam_.

He’s waking up, still mostly asleep, shivering from the chill of the deeper waters, but there’s something heavy wrapping around his tail and a face pushed into his hair and arms wrapped around his waist, and he burrows further into the soft, warm coil of bodies tangled around him and hears the soft clicking noises of whoever’s on watch as they scan for approaching threats. Someone smooths their hand down his face – _Go back to sleep, I’m on guard, I promise_ – and he curls into the soft touch and slides back into unconsciousness.

 _Slam_.

He’s launching himself through the water, feeling the electricity sparking down his arms as he bodyslams a great white shark. He’s slimmer than they are, but faster, and the electricity stuns them enough that he can grab the arm of his injured podmate and swim, swim as far and as fast as he can while he frantically sings the distress call into the water until a massive shape writhes up in response, weak sunlight glinting off the blue as their rescuer comes roaring in.

_Slam._

He’s curling into a loose ball as best he can, cowering beneath a rock overhang as a guttural snarl reverberates through the water around him and he feels the barest graze of current from the truly massive whirlpool currently sucking a ship to the bottom of the sea. He presses his hands against the graze on his side, left behind by the anchor of the ship that’s currently sinking, and prays that he can stop the bleeding before a shark catches his scent.

 _Slam_.

He wants to keep going, wants to batter against this wall until it breaks and he’s free, but it’s proving more difficult than he thought it would be. Whatever this sea-glass wall is made of, it’s more durable than anything he’s ever tried to break before; normal sea glass shatters if you hit it hard enough. Does he not have enough leverage? Is it his position? Will it be easier to assault his prison if he uses a rock?  

 _Will it even matter if he does get out_? he thinks. He’s stuck in the _human world_. There’s not any water outside this prison, and who knows how far he is from the ocean? Will it be worse for him if he escapes?

He shakes his head, hardening his resolve. No. Remaining trapped in a human prison is infinitely worse than breaking out, even if the journey home is arduous and painful. He has to break out. He has to get _home_. He needs something sharp to shatter the wall.

Unfortunately, it seems like the only things in his prison are himself and the water – nothing even remotely weaponized. He curls his arms around himself, searching for some comfort, _any_ comfort, in this sterilized containment, and winces when he tugs at the uncomfortable white growths on his skin.

He lifts an arm to his face to examine whatever it is. It’s flat and smooth, pressed completely against his skin, and it doesn’t appear to have gotten any bigger than it was before. Maybe it’s a slow-growing fungus? He’s pretty sure he’s only been out for a day or so, why is there so much fungus on him?

It isn’t hurting him, so he decides it’s probably safe to remove. He scratches at the edge of one of the patches on his arm, expecting it to start to flake away like most parasites do. Instead, it peels away cleanly, in one conjoined sheet. This is the weirdest fungus he’s ever seen, and clearly, he needs to get it off of his body as soon as he possibly can.

He yanks the fungus off in one go, letting it float away into the water as he examines the skin beneath it. There’s a wound beneath it, like he’s been stabbed, and now that it’s exposed blood starts to seep into the water, thin wispy trails of red leaking out. He can smell the sharp, coppery tang of blood in the water, and something flashes into his mind – not quite gratitude, but a sick, twisted sense of relief. He’s the only thing trapped in here, and that’s bad ( _very, very very bad_ ) but at the _absolute least_ he knows that he won’t be attracting any large predators with his injuries.

The white fungus is _everywhere_. He’s lucky that it didn’t cover his gills. The thought of that brings back a sharp, fresh panic as he remembers the storm and the net and the feeling of _drowning_ that he never thought he would fucking experience. He remembers the sharp, cold metal wrapping around his neck and the burning in his lungs as he opened his mouth and sucked down water and the panic and lack of air working together to cloud his mind and override his thoughts and and and _and_ –

He doesn’t realize that he’s panicking until his hands hit his neck, feeling his gills flare out as they frantically try to process the water in the tank and get him the breath that he so desperately needs. He thinks back, back, back, calling up another memory to try and feel some semblance of calm.

_I know that it’s scary, sharkbait. Believe me, I know you’re afraid. You have to breathe, okay? Listen to the surface – listen to the waves. Do you hear them? When you hear the first wave swell, take a breath. Keep breathing in until that wave peaks and crests and crashes. Then hold your breath, hold it until the second wave swells and peaks and crests and crashes. Then you let it out, let it out until the third wave swells and peaks and crests and crashes. Keep doing that until you’ve calmed enough to think, okay, sharkbait? Come here, let me count for you. You’re gonna be okay. I’ve got you, sharkbait, I’ve got you, you’re gonna be okay. I’ll never let anything happen to you. I swear it._

He winces as he remembers that promise. He’d been angry enough to want to never see his podmate again, and now that that’s a real possibility, seeing him again is the only thing he wants. He wants to hear that stupid nickname, he wants to race through open ocean and win even when he curbs his speed, he wants to fall asleep not caring about the chill of the waters because he’s snuggled in the warmth of his pod.

(And it’s ironic, really, because he hates being called _sharkbait_ , and he hates having to slow down so that he doesn’t lose his podmates in the ocean, and sometimes he gets overheated in the knot of mer, and he’s complained about all of these things at one point or another but now they’re all that he can think about. He wants to go _home_.)

He wraps his arms around his middle again, hugging himself tightly. (It’s not enough, not _nearly_ enough, and it’s _nothing_ compared to the weight of his podmates around him when he really needs them, but it will have to do.) Two fingers creep up to press against his neck, feeling his gills flare out again and again and again. He knows that he’s okay right now as far as being able to breathe goes, he knows that he’s – well, he’s not exactly _safe_ right now, but he’s not in danger of getting eaten by a great white shark, either, so that’s something.

The wounds under the white fungus don’t appear to be _caused_ by the white fungus. The fungus is flat, without any sharp edges on it at all, and the wounds are deep, like he’s been stabbed. He vaguely remembers the net having sharp barbs on it, but the lack of air making its way to his brain during that ordeal has left his memories somewhat scrambled.

He continues to peel at the sheets of fungus, and then sharp vibrations pierce through the water and assault his aching head. His hands clap over his ears _instantly_ , even though that won’t actually do anything, and he looks up, squinting through the water, sending a soft echolocation click through the water. He doesn’t receive anything back, so he slides forward a little, squinting.

There’s a shape looming over him through the glass, large and probably threatening. It looks vaguely similar to him – a torso, a head, two arms – but where his waist tapers neatly into a tail, this creature’s waist splits off into two separate, smaller tails that both end firmly on the ground. He quickly realizes that those aren’t smaller tails at all, but _legs_.

Which means that the creature looming over him is a _human_.

* * *

 

Virgil regrets leaving the merman alone, even for a few minutes (although he really, _really_ needed to pee), because when he comes back the merman is peeling off the bandages. Blood is leaking freely into the water, and Virgil panics _instantly_ because that’s _so unsanitary what the fuck_?!

He sprints across the room and knocks on the glass frantically. “Hey! Hey, stop that!”

The merman flinches away from the noise, and Virgil does feel bad about that but he’s not pulling his bandages off so he’s inclined to take that as a win. “You can’t do that, man! You gotta keep those on there!”

The merman bares his teeth, and _shit_ Virgil somehow managed to forget he had _fucking fangs_. His teeth are vaguely humanoid, but they all taper to a point. The scientist in Virgil starts cataloguing this intently – _teeth like that, he’s probably largely carnivorous, which makes sense given where he lives; diet will probably consist of raw fish and the like_ – while the normal human in him spirals into panic – _THOSE ARE FANGS THOSE ARE SHARP-ASS FANGS I COULD LOSE A FINGER OR A HAND OR A LIMB OR MY LIFE IF HE GETS CLOSE ENOUGH IS THIS REALLY WORTH DYING OVER I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR **THIS**_.

Virgil doesn’t have time to solve his internal crisis because the merman, apparently deciding that Virgil isn’t currently a threat, has started peeling his bandages off again. Virgil raps sharply on the glass, and the merman actually screeches at him a little. “I told you to knock that off!” The merman shows his teeth again, and Virgil wonders if he even understands English.

No, no, he _has_ to, he’d been nodding and shaking his head when Thomas questioned him earlier, and he’d _spoken_ to Virgil, too. If comprehension isn’t the issue, then maybe . . .

Maybe he just can’t _hear_ Virgil. The Plexiglas tank is pretty thick, not to mention it’s currently full of water. The knocking seems to hurt him, and Virgil’s speaking slightly louder than normal, but that doesn’t mean that the sound vibrations are strong enough to reach him.  
  
Virgil eyes the stairs spiraling up the side of the tank. Thomas is off acquiring fresh, raw fish from a local fisherman, and he’d made Virgil promise not to try and interact with the merman while he wasn’t there. Virgil had promised, because he hadn’t had any intention of opening the tank. Granted, he’d assumed that the merman was going to remain asleep until Thomas got back, since he had been asleep for almost twenty-four hours, but still, he _had_ promised. 

Now, though, the merman is awake, and tearing the bandages off his still-bleeding wounds, and Virgil watches the way his gills flare and his chest heaves and realizes that he’s _panicking_. He’s having some kind of panic attack. That strikes a chord deep within Virgil, because he kind of understands. He knows what it’s like to suddenly find yourself thrust into a new environment with strange people and feel trapped (although he doesn’t know the feeling _quite_ as literally as the merman does). And he knows he promised Thomas, and he knows that they both take promises super seriously, but he can’t imagine Thomas saying that helping someone who’s panicking is a bad thing. 

He knocks against the tank again, but gently, and when the merman looks at him, Virgil points at himself. Then he points up, towards the top of the tank, and makes an “open” motion with his arms. He repeats the sequence a couple of times, making sure the merman watches, and then he climbs up the spiraling stairs. He’s keenly aware of the merman’s eyes on him the entire time, tracking him with an intelligent awareness that Virgil has to confess he did not expect. 

The tank lid is large and heavy, and bolted securely closed. It takes two hands to throw one massive deadbolt, and it takes Virgil several minutes to get the tank lid completely unbolted. He hesitates, then, hands loosely gripping the lid. Is he really going to do this? He _did_ promise Thomas that he wouldn’t, and he doesn’t like to break promises (especially to Thomas). Not to mention, the merman is potentially very very dangerous. The fangs are sharp and made to tear through meat ( _and flesh_ , his mind helpfully supplies), and he doesn’t even know if the merman _wants_ to be helped by a human.

But the fat of the matter remains: the merman is injured, badly, and peeling off his bandages. Virgil can’t let him continue to bleed into the tank, he’ll contaminate the water, and he’s increasing his risk for infection. At the very least, he needs to change the water out, and he doesn’t want the merman in the tank for that. So, with a final resigned sigh and murmured apology to an absent Thomas, Virgil heaves the lid of the tank open.

It is at this point that he realizes that he doesn’t actually have what some have called a _plan_ for communicating with the merman. Obviously, it would be easier for all involved if the merman came out of the water, but Virgil has no way to communicate that he should come out of the water. This is probably why Thomas wanted him to wait. Thomas probably has a plan – he usually does. And he would have let Virgil proof-read it for errors, too. For all his concern over lab safety and protocol and procedure, Virgil is absolutely terrible at planning things out on his own. He kind of hates that about himself.

His problem is solved soon enough, however. The water in the tank is clear enough that he can see straight through to the bottom, which means he can see the way the merman coils his tail beneath him like a spring. Virgil barely has enough sense to lean away from the tank he’s currently peering in before the merman _launches_ himself towards the top. 

He manages to break the surface, and his entire torso clears the top of the water (which is scary impressive, considering his injuries and how large the tank actually is). He looks victorious for all of a split second before gravity kicks in and starts pulling him back below the surface. His eyes widen in panic and Virgil reaches for him. “Hey, no, _wait –_ ”

It’s too late. The merman drops back beneath the water, barely managing to avoid sinking like a stone straight to the bottom. Virgil barely has time to consider that this is a horrible idea before the merman is coiling himself up again, wincing as he drags his injured tail into position.

“Stop that!” Virgil yells, unsure how many of his words are reaching the merman undistorted. “You’re gonna hurt yourself, you have to stop!” 

The merman torpedoes up through the water and bursts out again, but this time he’s prepared. His hands fling out wildly, clawing and scrabbling frantically at the sides of the tank, the shifted lid, _anything_ he can use for leverage to pull himself up and keep himself out of the water. His hand catches on the edge of the tank, and he manages to hook his fingers over the rim. Virgil takes a moment to study them. They’re pretty humanoid, aside from the errant cluster of dark blue scales and the slightly claw-like fingernails.

Then the moment passes, and the merman is losing his grip. Virgil lunges forward and grabs his wrists, and the sheer momentum almost pulls him into the tank as well. He barely manages to get decent footing and a decent grip and haul the merman up out of the tank. Once the majority of the merman’s torso is up, he pulls his hands out of Virgil’s grip and heaves the rest of his tail out of the water, wincing. Virgil sits down, hard, and for a moment neither of them moves. They just eye each other, warily, breathing hard and heavy. 

Virgil notices two distinct slits on each side of the merman’s neck, flaps of skin that flare out a little before settling flat against his neck as he sucks in a massive gasp of air through his mouth. Gills, Virgil suspects, although he’s never seen a species with versatile gills like that. He wants to ask the merman about that, but his attention is drawn instead to the freely-bleeding wounds now revealed where the merman clawed his bandages off.

Virgil reaches forward without thinking, intent on grabbing the merman’s arm again to examine the wounds. The merman jerks backwards at the movement, and when Virgil keeps reaching (albeit a little more slowly), he narrows his eyes and makes a series of short, guttural clicks, punctuated with a sharp whistle.  
  
“I . . . have no idea what the fuck that means,” Virgil says. The merman repeats the clicking sequence, and when Virgil doesn’t stop reaching for him, he narrows his eyes and lunges forward, snapping at Virgil’s hand with _all_ of his fangs. Virgil barely manages to yank his hand back in time.

“Dude, what the _shit_ was that?!” he shrieks. The merman snarls and curls a little more closely around himself. “I don’t even have a fucking weapon! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The merman clicks angrily at him. “I don’t speak your weird click-y dolphin language! What the shit is wrong with –”

He stops shouting when he sees the tears welling up in the merman’s eyes, welling over and streaming down his face. He stops shouting when he sees the merman pulling his tail in to coil himself up as small as possible, hugging his chest so tightly that Virgil can barely see the way it heaves with panic. He stops shouting when the merman grips his hair so tightly that he’s concerned he’ll tear chunks of it out.

He stops shouting when he recognizes one of his panic attacks happening in someone else.  
  
“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, listen, you – you have to breathe, buddy.”

The merman snarls again, but it’s weaker this time, and kind of undercut by the tears streaming down his face. “Yeah, I know you’re upset right now. I’d . . . I’d be upset too, I think, if I woke up somewhere strange with a strange guy reaching for me, you know?”

He scoots backwards, sitting against the metal railing, giving the merman ample space. If anything, he only curls more tightly around himself. “I guess I . . . wasn’t really thinking about what _you_ might want, or how _you_ might be feeling. And that’s on me, I know, and I’m . . . sorry about that. This . . . this is probably why Thomas wanted me to wait until he got back. He’s loads better at this ‘feelings’ bullshit, y’know? But, uh, if – if there’s one thing I do know about, it’s panic, and, uh, you – you look like you’re panickin’ just a little. Can I help?”

The merman clicks at him. It’s shaky and broken-sounding, and Virgil suspects that even if he knew this weird language he wouldn’t understand what the merman had just attempted to say to him. “I don’t speak that language,” Virgil says. He tries to keep his voice as gentle and soothing as possible, tries to mimic the magic tone that Thomas uses whenever he’s panicking, the one that makes it seem like everything is going to be okay. “But I know you speak mine. I heard you, on the beach – you thanked me. In English. It might be easier for me to help you if you tell me what you need.”

There’s a few minutes of silence, broken only by the merman’s shaky sobs (even though he’s doing his best to muffle them) and Virgil’s quiet breathing. Finally, _finally_ , the merman says, in a quiet, shaky voice, “Wh . . . who are you?" 

“My name is Virgil. Do you have a name?”  
  
“Of course I have a name,” the merman snaps. Virgil waits, but he doesn’t offer it, so he doesn’t push. 

“You’re having a panic attack,” Virgil says. “You have to breathe.”  
  
“I am breathing. If I wasn’t breathing, I would be dead.”  
  
“You’re hyperventilating. That’s not the same thing. Here, let me –” Virgil starts to move closer. The merman’s eyes go wide with fear and he skitters backwards as best he can.

“ _Do not touch me!_ ” he shrieks.

“Okay, then. No touching. I’m staying over here, okay? I’m staying right here. Not getting close to you and your razor-sharp fangs.” The merman’s breathing, which had been starting to settle slightly, picks up until it’s even faster than it was before. Virgil wants to kick himself. Instead, he says, “I’m going to shift the position I’m sitting in, okay? I’m not getting up, and I’m not moving closer. Don’t freak out.”

“I did not _freak out_.”  
  
“You tried to bite me, dude.”

“You attempted to grab me!”

“Yeah, okay, that wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made, but what the fuck did you think _biting_ me was going to accomplish?”

“In my experience, it generally gets predators to leave you alone!”

“You honestly think _I’m_ a threat to you? A _predator_?”

“You’re a human! You stole me from the ocean! You trapped me here!”  
  
“I _rescued_ you! You were stuck in a net on the beach, you were _dying_!”  
  
“And for all I know, you _set_ that net!” 

“Why the fuck would I do that? That’s literally the exact opposite of my job description!” 

The merman chokes on another sob, and Virgil forces himself to take a deep breath. They’re not going to get anywhere doing this. He has to focus on one thing at a time. First step – get the merman to calm down and stop panicking. 

“Okay. I’m sorry. This has to be impossibly terrifying for you, and your panic attack isn’t helping. I need you to breathe with me, okay?”

“As previously noted, _I am breathing!_ ” 

“Not properly,” Virgil says. “You need to breathe in for four counts, hold it for seven counts, and exhale it for eight counts. Here, like this.” He demonstrates his anti-anxiety breathing technique, making sure to tap the counts out on his thigh. “It’ll help you calm down a little.”

“ _I do not need to calm down!"_  

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Virgil says gently. “You’re not getting enough oxygen to your brain, and if you pass out again you’re gonna be even more upset when you wake up. I’m trying to help you, I promise. Please, just – just let me help you.”

The merman watches him with wide, wet eyes, and he doesn’t look _terrifying_ anymore, he looks _terrified_. And fairly young, too, only about Virgil’s age (maybe a little younger?). Virgil doesn’t say anything, and slowly, slowly, the merman nods. “Okay. I’ll tap the counts out on my thigh, and I’ll breathe with you, alright? Here we go. In for four.” 

Virgil cycles through ten deep breaths before the merman is finally completely calmed from the throes of his panic attack. He’s still sniffling and wiping at his eyes a little, but he’s doing much better than he was. “Feeling any better?” 

“Y-yes. Thank you, Virgil.” 

“Yeah, well, I know how much panic attacks can suck. I get ‘em all the time. Used to be worse, though. I’ve got someone who helps me when I get them now.” Virgil always forgets how lucky he is to have Doctor Sanders – _Thomas_ – as an advisor. 

The merman fiddles with his hands, not meeting Virgil’s eyes, and mumbles something. “What?” 

He lifts his head, and meets Virgil’s eyes with stunning deep-blue irises. “I said, my name is Logan.”

* * *

 

Logan doesn’t know what possessed him to tell the human – _Virgil_ – his name. He’s still not sure that this is a decision he won’t regret. But he supposes that Virgil wouldn’t have taken the time to talk him through his panic attack if he was going to kill him. (He’s choosing not to focus on the aching familiarity of that breathing pattern, because he knows that he’ll start crying again if he does and he really does not have time for emotions right now.) 

“Do you remember what happened?” Virgil asks. “How you got here, I mean.” 

“I remember the storm,” Logan says, and he curls his hands into fists to try and stem the anxious whirlpool rising rapidly in his chest. “I remember the net. I remember washing up on the beach, I . . . I remember . . .” 

 _I remember almost drowning. I remember the terror of having my gills pinned shut as I sank further and further into the water. I remember being blind and helpless in the water because of my own stubborn arrogance. I remember begging for someone,_ anyone _, to come and help me, not realizing that_ anyone  _meant a_ human _._

“I remember you finding me on the beach,” he mumbles. “You and the other one. Where is he?” 

“Thomas? He went to go and get something for you to eat. Which reminds me – what _do_ you eat? We kind of extrapolated based on your teeth, but now you’re awake and you can answer our questions yourself.”

Logan blinks. “Um . . . I like most types of fish. I like . . . shellfish, too, but not too many.” He shudders at the visceral memories of finding an oyster bed and gleefully stuffing his face, only to be vehemently sick for days afterwards. “Mostly fish.”   

“And you eat it raw, right?”

“What is _raw_?”

“Y’know, not cooked? Like, you just catch the fish and then eat it without cooking it?”

“Yeeeeees?” Logan’s not really sure what _cooking_ means, but he doesn’t do anything to his fish other than catch it, kill it, and eat it, so he figures no is probably the right answer.

Virgil shrugs. “We’ll go with raw until proven otherwise. Now – why were you peeling off your bandages?”

“My what?”

Virgil shifts like he wants to touch Logan, but seems to remember Logan attempting to bite him and stays put. (Logan does feel a _little_ bad about that, but in his defense, Virgil should have known better than to approach a panicking merman.) “You know, on your arms and tail and stuff?”

Logan looks at the white patches still littering his tail. “Is that what this type of parasite is called?”

“What? No, Logan, buddy, it’s – they’re not a living thing. We put them there – me and Thomas.”

“Why?” 

“Because the net tore you up pretty badly. You have a lot of injuries, and if we don’t wrap them up they could get infected. Not to mention, all that blood leaking into the water of your tank? The water you’re _breathing_? Yeah, that’s not happening.”

Logan studies the wounds on his arms. It does make sense, now that he thinks about it – there’d been a wound beneath every sheet, but the sheets themselves hadn’t had any protrusions that could have caused them. “I . . . suppose that makes sense.”

“I need to replace them,” Virgil says. “And I need to check the bandages that you didn’t shred off, which means I’m gonna need to touch you.”

Logan balks, pulling himself into a slightly tighter knot. “Is – is that absolutely necessary?” 

“I don’t want you to get an infection,” Virgil says. “You’re gonna be here long enough, I don’t need you getting sick on top of that.” Logan doesn’t like the way he says that, but before he can say anything else, there’s another voice echoing through the lab.

“Virgil? Where are you?”

Virgil’s face drains of color. “Oh, shit.”

Another human appears, a little older-looking, carrying multiple brown bundles that are all emanating a familiar salty tang. Logan can feel his mouth watering against his will as his stomach rumbles a little. Virgil said the other human was going to get food, right?

“Virgil, where are – what are you doing up there? Did you open the tank?" 

“Thomas, you don’t understand, he was –” Virgil pushes himself up and scrambles down the stairs, and Logan peers over the side to see Virgil talking in a low, rapid voice to the older human (Thomas, if he’s remembering correctly), who looks unimpressed. He says something in a sharp tone that makes Virgil lower his head in defeat and or shame. His eyes flick from Virgil to Logan, who very quickly averts his gaze.

He hears footsteps ascending the tank, but he doesn’t look up until someone says, “Hello there!” Slowly, almost guiltily ( _why is he guilty? He didn’t ask for this, he didn’t make any of these decisions!_ ), he lifts his eyes to see the older human standing in front of him, carrying the tasty-smelling brown things.  
  
“Greetings,” he says cautiously. The human smiles, gently, shuffling the brown things in his arms. 

“May I sit down?”  
  
“If . . . you want to?”

The older human sits down, cross-legged, and spreads the brown things out in front of him, between them. “My name is Thomas. I take it you’ve already met my research assistant, Virgil?”  
  
“I have.”

“Can I ask what your name is?”

Logan is momentarily surprised; Virgil didn’t tell him? He shrugs it off and answers, “My name is Logan.

“Nice name,” Thomas comments. “Are you hungry?”

Logan’s stomach rumbles before he has a chance to answer verbally, and Thomas laughs a little. “I suppose I can interpret that as a yes, then? I didn’t know exactly what you eat, so I went down to the local fish market and got a bunch of freshly caught stuff. I figure we’ll eat or use whatever you don’t, so take your pick!” 

He unties the brown things, and the brown whatever-it-is (it looks kind of like dried seaweed) falls away to reveal fish – _lots_ of fish. They’re all dead, but recently killed, and Logan’s mouth waters when he sees them. “I . . . are all of these for me?”

“You can eat whichever ones you want to,” Thomas says. “And whatever ones you like, that’s the kind I’ll get next time.” Logan barely registers that, too busy staring at all of the options in front of him. Hesitantly, he picks one up, sniffing at it, and when he doesn’t smell any obvious threats, he sinks his teeth into it and tears a chunk of flesh off. 

It’s the best fish he’s ever eaten. He quickly takes another bite, and another, and another, almost choking as he eats from the sheer speed but he can’t bring himself to slow down, he’s _so hungry_. When he sets the cleaned skeleton aside, he reaches for another fish, and then hesitates. Is he allowed to eat more?

“Do you want more?” Thomas asks. Logan yanks his hand back like he’s been burned. 

“Um . . .”

“You’re allowed to have more, you know. I’m not gonna cap a limit on what you can eat. I don’t know how much you eat normally, and you’re recovering, you’re going to need a higher caloric intake.” He keeps talking, but Logan is no longer paying attention; he’s completely focused on scarfing down as many fish as he can. He vaguely registers Thomas taking note of the fish he prefers and the fish he avoids, but most of his focus is on his meal. 

When he finally finishes, swiping his tongue around his mouth to catch the last few scraps, he’s eaten approximately three-quarters of the fish offered to him. “Thank you,” he says quietly. Thomas nods, gathering the scraps together and smiling.

“You’re welcome, Logan.” 

Logan looks down at the tank, and then up at Thomas. “May . . . may I ask some questions?” He has a lot: _How did I get here? What are you going to do to me? Are you going to kill me? Am I_ ever  _going to get to go home or see my pod ever again?_

“Of course,” Thomas says. “Do you mind if we move you, first? That tank lid’s not really meant for sitting on. We’re gonna carry you down to the lab floor and let you sit on one of the tables. Is that okay?”

Logan is confused and slightly concerned. He doesn’t actually know if he’s _allowed_ to refuse the humans without receiving some sort of punishment. “I . . . guess so?”

Thomas ties up the fish that Logan didn’t eat and gathers all of the trash into a ball. “Excellent. Virgil and I will be right back to help you down, okay?”  
  
“Okay . . .”

Thomas heads off down the stairs again, and Logan finds himself picking at the white stuff – _bandages_ , Virgil had called them – again. He has to stop himself, because Virgil has seemed incredibly distressed the last time he’d done that. He doesn’t really want either Thomas or Virgil to be distressed. Generally speaking, it is a good strategy not to agitate predators, and he doesn’t yet know if they are predators.

They come up together, Virgil trailing a little way behind Thomas. Logan shuffles nervously. “Okay,” Thomas says. “Here’s what we’re going to do, Logan. One of us is going to lift your torso under the arms, and the other one is going to handle your tail. Do you have a preference who carries what?”

“Um . . .” Logan doesn’t really know what to say. “W-well, you had to carry me up here, right? W-who did what then?” He hates that he’s tripping over his words like a pup, but he can’t help being terrified.

“We did it both ways,” Thomas says. “You were probably too delirious from poison to notice.”

“Poison?”  
  
“There was neurotoxin in the barbs on the net,” Virgil says quietly. “That’s why you passed out, and why your memories are kind of hazy. You’ve been asleep for a little over a day while your body flushed the toxin out of your system.”

Logan remembers the haze in his mind, the clouds that strangled his thoughts even as the net strangled his body. He shudders a little, rubbing at one of the scale patches on his arms. “I . . . I remember that, vaguely." 

“We can handle either way,” Thomas says. “We want _you_ to be comfortable, Logan. This is a new environment for you. You must be terrified.”

 _Understatement_ , Logan thinks.

“You . . . um . . . w-whatever’s easier.”

Virgil stretches, arching his back and arms, and Logan does his best not to stare at the strip of pale skin revealed on his torso. “I’ll carry his torso if you take his tail?” Thomas looks to Logan for confirmation, and Logan nods, not trusting himself to speak.

Virgil’s hands are slightly cold on his arms, sliding beneath his armpits and lifting him up. Now that Logan’s conscious, he hooks an arm around Virgil’s neck and links his hands together. He turns to talk to Virgil, but they’re a lot closer than he thought they were – their noses are almost touching, and this close he can see the flecks of lighter brown and grey in Virgil’s dark eyes, the little pale brown scales scattered all over his nose and cheeks. Logan very quickly averts his eyes. 

Thomas’s hands on his tail startle him, and he flinches a little. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m going to pick your tail up now, okay? I’ll be as gentle as possible.”  
  
“Okay . . .” 

Thomas slings Logan’s tail over his shoulder, scales sliding smoothly along the weird, itchy fabric. He glances over his shoulder as he takes a step backwards, and Virgil follows, taking a step forward. It’s a strange feeling, being carried around like this. He’s used to being semi-weightless in the water, but this is new. He’s not sure if he likes it or not.

There are a few tense, precarious moments where Thomas slips and wavers; Logan is dripping water onto the stairs, and Thomas is going backwards. Despite that, he manages to stay upright. It’s not until they get about halfway down the staircase that Thomas completely loses his footing. He falls backwards, and Virgil lets out a strangled “ _Thomas!_ ”

Logan can already picture Thomas tumbling down the stairs, cracking his head open on the metal stairs, and he reacts on instinct, curling his tail around Thomas and tightening his grip. The heavy, well-toned muscle catches Thomas, keeping him from falling, and Logan winces as searing pain screams through his entire lower half.

Thomas’s arms flail until he grabs the railing, steadying himself and finding his center of gravity again. “Good?” Logan groans, tail shaking from the exertion. Thomas nods, and Logan lets his tail relax. The agony singing in his muscles eases a little (but not a lot), and he’s startled to feel tears sliding down his face.

“Thank you,” Thomas says, gripping the railing. “I . . . that could have been . . . you saved . . . thank you, Logan.”  
  
“N-no problem,” Logan gasps, going limp in Virgil’s arms. He didn’t realize how badly the net tore him up until this moment, and he’s pretty sure he could have handled living in ignorance of that fact for a while. Thomas readjusts his grip and they start down the stairs again, more slowly this time.

Logan and Virgil exhale together in relief when Thomas steps securely onto the flat lab floor. It’s relatively easy to get Logan to the table once they’re off the stairs, and even though he shivers at the chill of the cool metal he’s relieved to get out of the humans’ arms. 

“So,” Thomas says, sitting down with Virgil next to him. “There’s clearly a lot for us to talk about.”

Logan swallows, hard. “Yes. Yes, there is.”


	4. that water never did to land before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE IT IS, Y'ALL, THE LONG AWAITED CHAPTER 4! i promise chapter 5 won't have such a long wait (and you'll be grateful for that *wink wink*) 
> 
> tw: panic attack, anger, electricity, injury mentions, blood mentions, fight mentions, minor angst, mild anxiety

“What do you want to know?”

Thomas watches the way the merman shakes on the lab table.

“Are you cold?” he asks. Logan blinks at him. “You’re shaking. I know you’re probably scared, but the table can’t be super warm, either. Do you want a blanket or something?”

Logan tilts his head suspiciously. “What . . . what is a . . . _blanket_? Does it hurt?”

“No,” Thomas says, and it hurts his heart that Logan thinks he’s going to be hurt here. He knows that it’s probably the most rational thing for him to assume, but he hopes they can convince Logan they mean well. “It’s . . . it’s a soft thing. We drape them over ourselves to stay warm, and we use them when we sleep, too.”

“It is cold here,” Logan admits. “If you do not mind, I – I think I would enjoy one of those _blankets_.”

Virgil hurries out of the room and returns quickly with a red-and-gold plaid blanket. It’s thick and warm, and he’s painstakingly careful as he drapes it over Logan’s shoulders and tucks it around his body. “Better?” Thomas asks.

Logan sighs shakily and curls into the blanket. “Better,” he agrees. “You . . . must have other questions for me, I imagine?”

“You’re surprisingly fluent in English,” Virgil says, clicking the tape recorder he keeps in his pocket on. “I didn’t think you’d speak this well.”

Logan looks at him as though he’s stupid. “Of course I speak this language,” he says. “My kind speak the language of whatever human civilization we happen to live near. We need to understand what your fishermen are saying if we’re going to avoid getting netted and killed. Not . . . that it always works.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Thomas says. “We just want to know how to help you.”

“Put me back,” Logan says immediately. “Put me back in the ocean. Let me go back to my pod, they’re probably worried sick I –”

He looks at them and clamps his mouth shut. “Pod?” Thomas asks. “As . . . as in a family unit? You – you have a family?”

“Of _course_ I have a family!” Logan snaps. “What, did you think I was some kind of monster roaming around the ocean on my own sinking ships and eating sailors?”

“What –”

“Don’t play dumb with me! I know _exactly_ how humans think! They think we’re monsters! When they catch us, they take us apart to study us or they put us on display and kill us slowly or – I don’t know if they eat us or not but I wouldn’t put it past you!”

“Okay, calm down time!” Virgil says. “We don’t think you’re a monster. We wanna study you, yeah, but we don’t have to _vivisect_ you to do that!”

“What does that _mean_?!”

“We aren’t going to cut you open,” Thomas says softly. “We’re scientists. We study the ocean and the creatures that live in it. We rescue animals that have been hurt by other humans.”

“You mean you _steal_ them.”

“No, I mean rescue. We bring them here, we patch them up, and we let them heal in a safe environment where predators can’t get them. And once they’re strong enough to survive in the wild, we let them go. We release them into the ocean, where they belong, because keeping them here longer than we have to would be cruel.”

Logan is still glaring suspiciously at them, but there are tears brimming in his eyes. “I – I don’t – I want to go home,” he demands. He doesn’t sound nearly as scary as before. “I want to go back to the ocean.”

“You’re not strong enough to survive that journey,” Thomas says. “You were poisoned by that net, and it tore you up pretty badly regardless. You aren’t going to be healed enough to go back for at _least_ two weeks.”

“That – I – n-no, you – I can’t – th-they’ll be so s-scared,” Logan whispers. “They’ll think something happened to me. I – I have to go home. _Please_.”

Thomas looks at his hands. “I . . . I’m so sorry, Logan. We can’t let you go home yet. If we do that, it . . . it would be opening you up to all sorts of dangers that -”

“You think I don’t know how _dangerous_ the ocean is?!” Logan snarls. “I grew _up_ there! I spent my childhood frolicking around the depths of the Marianas Trench! My idea of _fun_ was to taunt a shiver of sharks and get them to chase me because I knew I outpaced them easily! I’m a _hunter_! There are plenty of dangerous things in the ocean and _I am one of them!_ ”

His chest is heaving, eyes narrowing, tail twitching. Thomas inhales sharply, preparing to say something, but then he catches the scent in the air. It’s sharp and metallic, almost coppery but not quite. He _knows_ this scent. It’s almost . . .

_Electric._

“Virgil, _get down!_ ” Thomas yells. He grabs Virgil and tackles him down to the ground, rolling away from the metal chairs and the metal lab table and the metal everything. Logan screams, tail slamming against the table as electricity crackles down his entire being. It leaps out from the circular patches of scales on his arms, it arcs across his tail, it crackles at the corners of his eyes as he screams.

“ _Let me go!_ ” he wails. “ _Please, let me go back to them! Let me go! I don’t want to be here! I never wanted to be here! Let me go back to them!_ ”

The electricity fizzles out, and Logan’s hands find their way up into his hair. He grabs at it, pulling it much harder than Thomas would prefer as he screams. “ _Let me go! Let me go, let me go, LET ME GO!_ ”

“We can’t do that!” Thomas calls. He curls his body protectively over Virgil’s, shielding as much of him as he can. “We can’t let you get hurt any more than you already are!”

Logan shrieks again, and Thomas claps his hands over his ears, because that is _not_ a human noise. It sounds like the scraping of a rusty ship’s hull against rocks as it crashes in a midnight storm. It sounds like the wind howling through a wild November hurricane. It sounds like the power and fury of the wildest ocean depths, condensed into one long, never-ending noise.

Eventually, however, it does end, and when Thomas finally uncovers his ears, he hears not the shrieks of some long-dead sea monster entity, but the muffled sobs of a broken man. He cautiously rises up onto his knees, peering over the edge of the table to see Logan, slumped over the cold, hard metal, face buried in his arms. His entire body shakes with sobs, and Thomas carefully reaches for his shoulder. “Logan -”

“ _Get away from me!_ ” Logan roars. He throws his head forward, snapping a mouthful of gleaming fangs, and Thomas barely manages to avoid those fangs sinking into his hand. " _I want to go home!_ ” His entire body is tense, preparing to launch himself off the table, but he’s shaking from the force and wincing from the pain.

“Virgil, can you please go into the kitchen and make some tea?” Virgil looks at Thomas as though he’s just asked him to set the lab on fire and leave him there.

“Doc, are you sure -”

“Yes. I got more teabags, they’re in the cabinet above the stove.”

Virgil cautiously edges away from Logan, who glares at him until he leaves. Once the lab door slams shut behind him, Logan’s gaze snaps right back to Thomas. Thomas carefully lifts his hands up palm-out.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“ _You hurt me when you took me away from my family!_ ”

“We didn’t set that net,” Thomas says, soothing but firm. “We found you on the beach, poisoned and dying. I’m sorry that you got caught in it, and I’m sorry that you’ve been stolen from your family. I promise that Virgil and I will get you back to them as soon as we possibly can. But we run the risk of killing you if we release you back into the ocean as you are.”

“I’ve spent my _entire life in the ocean!_ _It can’t kill me, it can’t hurt me!_ ”

“You can barely move right now.” Logan bristles, and Thomas hates himself for being so callous but he needs Logan to understand the severity of the situation. “There’s no way that you would survive on your own. Even if you can defend yourself from predators, you’re exhausted and you can barely move. How are you going to hunt? How are you going to feed yourself?”

“My pod will -”

“How are you going to locate them?”

“I - I can call for them!”

“Sure, but what if they can’t hear you? The sound will only travel so far. If they can’t hear it, you have to move, but your mobility is extremely limited. It would be better for you to wait until you’ve healed more. I’m sorry that you have to be here, but you do.”

Logan screeches loudly. Thomas covers his ears and hunkers down to wait it out, but he can’t completely block out the noise. It’s a horrible noise just on principle (like grating metal, like nails on a chalkboard, like steel wool fibers pulled apart and dragged across a cheese grater, like a badly out-of-tune piano, like the death shriek of a hellish creature, like a car wreck), but there’s more to it than that. The noise is horrible because it’s the sound of a heart breaking, shattering into pieces.

The screech goes on forever and it lasts only a moment. By the time Logan has stopped screaming and Thomas’s ears have stopped ringing, Virgil is lurking near the staircase. He’s wearing his wireless headphones to muffle the horrible noises. Thomas smiles, balling his fists to hide the shaking, and motions for Virgil to come in.

Logan is shivering, pulling the blanket tightly around himself and curling up to avoid looking at them as best as he can. Virgil’s footsteps are hesitant and shuffling, less of a step than a drag of his foot across the linoleum floor. He carefully sets the tray down and looks at Thomas, hesitantly pulling one headphone away from his ear.

“Is . . . everything okay, Doc?”

“Yes, Virgil, everything is fine.”

Thomas sips at his tea, watching the merman carefully. Logan very pointedly stares at anything he can see that is NOT Thomas or Virgil, clutching his arms so tightly that Thomas worries he’ll leave gouges in his arms. “I’m sorry that we have to keep you here,” he says. “But you have my word that once we’ve confirmed you’re stable enough to survive, we’ll release you into the ocean.”

“How am I supposed to trust that?” Logan snaps. He doesn’t look at them.

“The doc would never lie to someone,” Virgil spits, defensive, but Thomas shakes his head a little.

“He’s allowed to be upset. For all he knows, we kidnapped him.”

“We did not! We would _never_ -”

“Virgil, how would you feel if you woke up injured and isolated in a strange place and were then told that you weren’t allowed to go home for quite some time? I know I would be terrified.” He turns his gaze from Virgil to Logan as he speaks. “I would want to go home as soon as possible. I would want to be freed immediately, and if I wasn’t, I would lash out at anyone who tried to keep me confined, even if they said they only wanted what was best for me. How would I know they were telling me the truth?”

“I . . . I guess you’re right . . .”

“Logan,” Thomas says softly. “I understand that you’re upset. It’s okay. It’s a perfectly natural and valid response to the situation that you’re in right now. I just want you to understand that Virge and I, we’re going to take care of you. We want you to recover and we want you to get home safely.”

“How am I to trust that?” Logan says softly. “I know what humans think of those like me. We are rare, exotic creatures to be kept on display and shown off like trophies. We are not capable of real thought or speech, despite our tremendous ability for ‘mimicry’. What if I never see my family again?”

“Why don’t you tell me about them?” Thomas prompts. “You don’t have to be super specific, but talking about them may make you feel a little better . . .”

Logan’s eyes flicker towards him, although they focus on his feet rather than his face. One hand comes away from clutching the blanket to gently touch the odd band of lighter-blue scales coiling around his upper arm.

“I . . . I suppose . . .”

* * *

 

_Sunlight filters through the water. A red blur darts around in front of him, weaving with ease through seaweed that would tangle in his fins and ensnare him. “Stay where I can see you, Roman!” he calls, but the smaller mer doesn’t listen._

_Finally, he catches up, taking a detour above the seaweed, almost panicking when he hears crying. He sends out rapid distress clicks, but when Roman answers back almost immediately unharmed, he calms down a little (but not much)._

_“I found someone!” Roman calls back. “He’s crying and he’s all alone, I think he might be lost!”_

_He swims closer, listening, and he picks up on the sobs only a few more seconds after Roman does. “Hello? Are you alright? You don’t have to cry, we’re here to help you! Did you lose your pod?”_

_“I . . . I do not . . . I do not have a pod,” the stranger sniffles. A few quick clicks confirm that there is a second mer, slightly smaller than Roman, sleek and streamlined with his hands pressed to his face. “I am all alone.”_

_“Do you remember what happened to your pod, little mer?”_

_“I do not have a pod,” he repeats. “I - I have never had a pod. I do not . . . I do not remember what happened to me. I woke up near this reef, and I was alone, and I cannot remember ever not being alone. I . . . I think that I have always been alone.”_

_He feels the water disturb as Roman fidgets, rustling his spines and trying to decide if he should reach out and comfort the strange mer with touch. “You’ve . . . always been alone?” Roman asks softly._

_“Yes,” the mer says. “I . . . that is not normal, is it?”_

_“No, little guppy, it’s not,” he says. “But it’s okay, you don’t have to cry! You can come with me and be part of my pod if you want!”_

_He can see the mer freeze, fidgeting a little with his hands and looking up at him instead of down at the sea floor. He starts to uncoil, just a little bit. “You . . . you want me?”_

_“Of course, guppy! Roman here used to be part of another pod, but when we found each other he was all alone too! Now he’s part of my pod, and he’s not alone anymore!”_

_“It’s really great! We’re a small pod, but we’re a great pod! I like us much better than my old pod,” Roman says, puffing his chest out proudly. He hears the other mer giggle a little, quietly._

_“Do you want to join our pod, guppy?” he asks, soft and gentle as though he’s cradling a sea otter pup in his palms._

_“Wh - really? You really want - I can join - you - really?!”_

_“Of course! I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want you to join us!”_

_He’s close enough to the other mer to see when his face breaks into a wide grin. “I would love that! I - I’ve never had a pod before, how do I join?”_

_“Tell me your name.”_

_“Logan. I - that’s the only thing that I remember. My name is Logan.”_

_“Welcome to the pod, Logan.” He reaches forward, carefully wraps his thumb and index finger around Logan’s upper arm. He concentrates on Roman, the only other member of his pod, and hears Logan gasp when all of his scales light up. Roman grins proudly at his side as the blue scales on his arm begin to glow._

_When he pulls his hand away, there’s a band of light blue scales wrapping around Logan’s arm. “Whoa! How did you do that?”_

_“Easy, guppy. I’m magic.”_

_“He’s an elder mer!” Roman boasts proudly. “He can do all kinds of cool, neat stuff that we can’t because he’s_ magic! _That’s our podmark! It means you belong with us now!”_

_“And it shares a little of my magic with you,” he adds. “I age differently than regular mer, so now you age differently, too! I didn’t ever want to lose my pod, and now I never have to!”_

_Logan smiles shyly._

_“I’ll race you!” Roman declares, turning and pointing out into open water. He sends a click out, waiting for the echo to show him the shape of the rocky cliff that Roman is gesturing to. “I bet you can’t beat me!”_

_“I bet I can!”_

_“You’re on!”_

_He feels Logan take off, and he’s slicing through the water like a shark. Roman doesn’t even start swimming, so completely stunned and in awe at Logan’s speed. “He didn’t tell me he could rocket around like a sailfish!” he complains._

_“You didn’t ask, guppy,” he chuckles. “You’d better start swimming, or he’s going to beat you for sure!”_

_“Never!”_

_He lets them swim for a minute longer, carefully sending out echos to check their progress. Logan is absolutely going to beat Roman to the cliff, even without the head start he’d accidentally received. With a soft bubbling huff of laughter, he swims off after them._

_*~*~*~*~*_

_Roman is dizzy. Where is his pod? What’s happening? All he knows is that one minute, he was swimming along after his dad and his brother, and then he was suddenly slammed into the sea floor. He pushes himself up, flaring his spines defensively._

_There are orcas surrounding him, gnashing their teeth as they circle above him. The largest one is battle-scarred, tail swishing menacingly, and as Roman puffs his spines out, the large orca slams its tail at him. So that’s what knocked him down._

_Roman swims up, looking for his pod, but he can’t find them. They must not have realized that he’s been caught. His head is still spinning like a whirlpool with the force of the blow, but he has to fight. He has to get out, he has to get back to his pod._

_One of the orcas lunges towards him, and he twists, slamming his spiky tail into the orca’s body. It howls in pain and jerks forward, yanking him through the water and straight towards the gaping maw of another orca. He quickly yanks his tail away, shouting a word his dad would never approve of as a few of his spines are ripped away. Even though they’ll grow back, his heart still pangs at the sight of his beautiful spines embedded in such a monster._

_Two of the orcas rush him at once, and he quickly barrel rolls away from them, firing his spines out as he dives through the opening. He shrieks as one of the orcas snaps and catches his tail in their jaws. Pain explodes up through his side as he slashes his arms around and stabs his elbow spines directly into the orca’s eye._

_“Get off of me!” he roars. The orca lets go with a yelp as Roman floods his gills with water and screams his pod call into the water. The orcas around him make angry noises, and not for the first time Roman wishes his dad was here. His dad speaks orca, he could get these awful creatures to leave him alone. And his dad is big, he would be able to tail-slap the orcas into the abyss._

_The orcas, angry at Roman fighting back and angry at him calling for help, swarm him. He doesn’t have enough spines to fight them all off, and he drives his elbows into them at every opportunity but it’s not enough. There is pain everywhere as they bite at him and tail-slap him, and soon enough he’s sinking back to the sea floor._

_The water around him clouds with blood, and the orcas begin to circle in a more hurried frenzy. The ones he’s speared are beginning to sink from the poison in his spines, slowing down as it invades their brains and slows them down, but that hasn’t helped him. If anything, it’s spurred the other orcas into a frenzy._

_Roman calls for his pod again and again and again and again, desperately praying to the Goddesses of the Seven Seas that his dad shows up to save him before the orcas eat him._

_“Roman?!”_

_Roman jerks his head up, hearing a response to his pod call, but quickly realizes that it’s Logan swimming to his rescue. “Logan, no, get out of here! Go get -”_

_“I’m not leaving you!” Logan skillfully weaves through the orcas and swims down to grab Roman’s forearms. “What happened?! Are you hurt?! No, that’s a stupid question, you’re obviously hurt, what can I do?!”_

_“You can get out of here!” Roman hisses. “You can go get dad, he can fight off these monsters and you’re faster than I ever could be!”_

_“I’m not leaving you!” Logan repeats. “What happens if they get to you before I get back? I just got this pod, I’m not abandoning you!”_

_Roman is distracted by the sight of one of the orcas growing impatient with waiting. It dives down, mouth open, teeth glinting and sharp, and Roman knows that it’s going to sink its teeth into Logan’s fins and hurt his baby brother and he_ will not let that happen.

_“Logan, get down, now!” he snaps. Logan jerks his head up, turns to see the orca. But he doesn’t move; instead, he positions himself in front of Roman. “What are you doing, you kelp-brain?!”_

_“GET AWAY FROM MY BROTHER!” Logan roars. Roman gasps as the dark rings of scales all over Logan’s tail and torso and arms begin to glow, so brightly that Roman is forced to close his eyes. The water around them gets suddenly warm, and then there’s a burning all over Roman’s body that leaves him stunned and paralyzed. He can barely keep his eyes open, and the last thing he sees is the illuminated silhouette of his enraged baby brother._

_*~*~*~*~*_

_Logan blinks awake, feeling strange motion around him even though he is not swimming. He opens his eyes and realizes that he is being held in someone’s arms._

_“Dad . . .?”_  
_  
_ “Shhh, guppy,” he soothes. “It’s alright, you’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

_“But - but Roman, he - they - I -”_

_“He’s safe too, guppy. I have him.” He is shifted, carefully, and Logan realizes that his dad has him cradled in one arm and Roman in the other. “He’s lost quite a few of his spines, but they regrow after a few days. It’ll be painful cause he’s lost so many . . . but he’ll survive. We’re going back to our cave so I can patch him up.”_

_“Wh . . . what happened, Dad? I remember finding Roman, I remember turning to see the orca, I remember getting angry . . . but nothing else . . .”_

_“You have a gift,” his dad says, and he sounds proud. “You have been blessed by the Goddesses of the Seven Seas. They have given you the Burning Light.”_

_“Wh . . . what?”_

_“The rings on your body emit a Burning Light. It travels through the water and stuns everything in its path. Few mer are gifted with the Burning Light - you are blessed, guppy, truly.”_

_“I just wanted Roman to be safe.”_

_“And he is, guppy. He most assuredly is.”_

* * *

 

“Burning Light?” Virgil asks, rapidly scribbling down notes.

“We later learned from overhearing human sailors that the humans refer to the blessing as ‘electricity’,” Logan says. “It allows me to hunt, and to protect my pod, although that is not my primary job. That belongs to . . . to my brother.”

“Roman, right?” Thomas says. “The one with the spines?”

“Yes,” Logan murmurs. “He is my older brother. He and my father . . . they are the only family that I have in this world. They are my pod. And now, I have been taken from them, and . . . and I do not know if I will ever see them again.” One hand comes up to touch the light blue band of scales around his arm, what they understand now to be a mark from his pod.

“I promise that you will,” Thomas says. “We just want to make sure that you’ll _survive_ when you go back to the ocean. You’re injured, and you can barely move.”

“I am aware.”

“I promise that as soon as you’re healed, we’re going to let you back to the ocean,” Thomas says. “We don’t want to keep you here any longer than we absolutely have to. But I cannot, in good conscience, let you go to your death.”

“I . . . I suppose I can appreciate such a sentiment,” Logan sighs, “although I am still fundamentally opposed to remaining here. I . . . am sorry that I attacked you earlier. I was distressed, but . . . that is not an excuse.”

“Hey, no, don’t do that,” Virgil says, snapping his head up. Logan’s eyes widen slightly at the fire in his voice, a fire Virgil hadn’t meant to put there but doesn’t bother to suppress. “For all you know, you’ve basically just been kidnapped by your greatest enemy. It was a perfectly legitimate response on your part. And the doc and I are fine.”

Logan blinks. “I . . . thank you, Virgil.”

“No problem.”

“May . . . may I make a request?”

“What kind of request?”

“I - I would like to go back into the water now,” Logan says, looking away from Thomas and Virgil nervously. “I dislike when I am not at least partially submerged.”

“Well, you can’t go back into the big tank until we flush it out and bring in clean water,” Thomas says. “You were peeling your bandages off, so the water’s contaminated, it’s got your blood in it now. And we have to rewrap the bandages that you peeled off . . .”

“What about the turtle tank?” Virgil says. He refers to the large, flat, cylindrical tank where they keep smaller sea turtles and rays when they’re brought in for recovery. It kind of reminds Virgil of the touch tank at an aquarium, and it’s not an ideal place to keep Logan permanently but it could be a good solution for the time being.

“Hmm . . . That could work,” Thomas says. “Logan, would that be alright with you?”  
  
“You . . . care what I think?”  
  
“Of course we do.” Thomas smiles gently. “We want you to be comfortable while you’re here.”

Logan looks painfully surprised, and Virgil can’t stop his mind from wandering to what kinds of horrible, torturous things the poor merman thinks they’re going to inflict upon him. “I . . . tell me again what you are proposing?”

“We can’t put you back into the big tank because the water has your blood in it, and you could get sick if you sit in that. And we need to rewrap your bandages, too. But we have another, smaller tank that we can let you sit in so that you’re in the water at least a little. Virgil will rewrap your injuries while I flush out the tank, and then you can go back in the water, okay?”

“That . . . that seems adequate.”

“Okay then,” Thomas says. “Can we pick you up, Logan?”

“Yes,” he says, “although I would prefer -”

Logan stops talking before he finishes his sentence, but Thomas refuses to let him. “What is it, Logan? You’re allowed to tell us what you would prefer.”

“I . . . would prefer if . . . if you held my tail, while Virgil held my . . . the rest of me.”

“You - you really would?” Virgil feels his face heat up as Thomas shoots him a distinctive blackmailer’s grin before smiling kindly at Logan again.

“Of course we can do that,” he says. “Virgil, is that alright with you?”

“Y - yeah, of course it is,” Virgil grumbles, glaring at him. When he looks at Logan, however, his anger evaporates as the merman reaches out and gently touches his upper arm with one hand.

“Thank you, Virgil. I greatly appreciate it.”

“Yeah - I - um - y - no problem,” he mutters, feeling the heat spread through his cheeks and his ears and his entire face. Logan removes his hand from Virgil’s arm, and Virgil feels the spot where it was begin to tingle and burn from lack of contact. Before he can properly begin to process what that might mean, however, Logan reaches up and locks his arms around Virgil’s neck.

Virgil barely manages to remember to _breathe_ , but after only a few seconds of short-circuiting he remembers how his arms work and scoops Logan up. He’s faintly aware of Thomas next to him, gathering Logan’s tail into his arms and wrapping it carefully around his shoulders and waist to keep it off the floor, but all he can focus on is Logan.

Logan’s arm presses against the bare skin of Virgil’s neck, and it’s slightly rough and scaly but also surprisingly smooth. His hair is damp, with little beads of water running down his face, and Virgil swallows hard as he watches a single drop run down the pale column of Logan’s neck. His eyes are framed by small, glittering, dark blue scales, but even their beauty cannot compare to how pretty Logan’s eyes are. It’s like staring straight into the depths of the ocean, frightening but mesmerizing all at the same time.

“Earth to Virgil?” Thomas asks. Virgil snaps his head up and looks away from Logan, towards his boss. “Are you ready to go?”

“Wh - I - y-yeah, I - sorry, boss, I got distracted. I’m ready, I’m sorry. Are we moving now?”

“Just waiting on you, Virgil. On three?”

“On three. One . . .”  
  
“Two . . .”

“Three!”

Virgil and Thomas both lift up at the same time, managing to hoist Logan up off the table. Logan shifts a little, apparently still slightly unnerved by the idea of being lifted around, and Virgil tries very hard not to think about how he’s basically carrying Logan bridal style. Instead, he pushes up onto the balls of his feet and begins to take slow, careful steps backwards, glancing between Thomas and Logan and his destination over his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Logan says softly, and his mouth is _right_ next to Virgil’s ear. Virgil is proud of the way he doesn’t even flinch a little, even as his heartrate rockets up to truly dangerous levels.

“N - no problem.”

Virgil carefully lowers Logan into the tank, keeping his hands under Logan’s armpits to hold him upright while Thomas disentangles himself from Logan’s tail. It slithers neatly into the water in one shimmering, fluid motion, and Logan carefully lays back, submerging himself completely in the water before poking his face up above the surface.

“Better?” Thomas asks.

“Much.”

Thomas heads off to the big tank, and Virgil pulls a roll of bandages out of his pocket. “This might sting a little . . . but I promise I’m not trying to hurt you. I just wanna keep you safe.”

Logan sighs, wincing as he shifts his tail so that Virgil can see his arms. Tenderly, Virgil pulls out a cloth and begins to carefully wipe at the exposed injuries. Logan hisses at the sting, flinching just a little, but he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t bite Virgil, either, which causes Virgil to breathe a massive sigh of relief.

After all the injuries are wiped down and clean, he begins to bandage them. Some of them are small enough that he can simply cut off a small piece of bandage and plaster it down, but some of them require wrapping lengths of bandage around Logan’s arms and torso.

Virgil keeps his touch as light as possible, applying as little pressure as possible, since there are bruises around the injuries. Logan flinches and winces but keeps his face stoic, watching Virgil with a careful, calculating, almost eerie intelligence. Virgil pretends that he doesn’t notice the way Logan is looking at him, the way Logan is _studying_ him.

He very much notices.

He finishes bandaging Logan before Thomas finishes flushing and filling the tank, so he turns to pick up his sketchpad before realizing that he probably shouldn’t be drawing Logan without his explicit consent. “Hey, Logan?”

“Yes?”

“I - do you care if I draw you? I usually draw the marine life that we bring in, cause it’s good practice, so I - I just figured that I should ask you for permission before -”

“What is . . . _draw_?” Logan asks.

Virgil hesitantly opens the sketchpad and turns it to some of his previous drawings - starfish, sea turtles, jellyfish, sea urchins. He flips through them slowly, watching Logan’s eyes widen and mouth open as he stares at the drawings.

“You . . . created these?”  
  
“Yeah,” Virgil says. He pulls a pencil out of his pocket and quickly sketches a flower in the corner of a page. “There . . . I kind of had some . . . some drawings of you already . . .”

Logan is quiet. “May I see them?”

Virgil blushes, tucking the pencil behind his ear. “Um . . . Y-yeah, yeah, I - here, here you go . . .”

He carefully shows Logan the sketches he’s already done - Logan curled in the tank, asleep, rough guess sketches of Logan’s anatomy, close-ups on some of Logan’s fins and the band of light blue scales around his upper arm. He deliberately doesn’t turn the page to the final drawing, which is a close-up of Logan’s face that he spent an embarrassing amount of time on.

“You . . . created these images of me? But . . . but why?”

“Some of the drawings I do get sold for textbook illustrations, some of them are for research purposes, some of them are just practice for anatomy. But most of them are just . . . for fun. I like drawing.”

Logan blinks. “Does . . . drawing me require any specific action on my part?”

“Nope. You don’t really have to do anything at all.”

Logan studies Virgil’s face very carefully, and Virgil studies him back. He doesn’t know if he’s going to be allowed to continue drawing the merman, but his mind is already thinking in artist terms. How should he shade Logan’s irises? How should he capture the delicate facial scales? How should he accurately represent the gossamer-thin fins that replace Logan’s ears, the hair that floats around him like a feathery halo in the water and plasters itself to his forehead in the air, the curve of his chin and the slant of his nose and the bright life that gleams in his eyes?

“You may continue to draw me,” Logan decides, finally. “On one condition.”

“What’s the condition?”

“I would like to be able to see the drawings when they are done.” Logan suddenly averts his gaze, looking away almost adorably. “If . . . you do not mind showing them to me.”

“Of course I don’t,” Virgil answers immediately. “I’m more than happy to show them to you. They’re _of you_. Thank you, so much, for letting me draw you.”

Logan smiles, and his entire face lights up, and Virgil is _so, so gay._

Before his soul can completely leave his body, Thomas calls that the tank is full, and Virgil is setting his sketchbook aside and helping Thomas carry Logan back to the tank. They do their best not to throw him into the tank, but he still sinks in the water without much grace due to his injured tail.

“He must coil like that because he misses his pod,” Thomas comments, watching the way that Logan curls up to sleep.

“We can’t keep him away from them, Doc,” Virgil says.

“We can’t release him yet, Virgil. He can’t even swim. If he goes back into the ocean, the scent of blood will attract predators galore. He’ll never survive, and he won’t ever see his pod again.”

“Yeah, but look at him,” Virgil argues. Logan is coiling up, slowly and painfully, and he looks objectively miserable. “He’s never gonna be happy here, Thomas. We don’t want him to suffer, but he’s _gonna_ suffer if he’s alone.”

“So what are you proposing, that we go find his pod?”

Virgil smirks. “Well, actually . . .”

*~*~*~*~*

“You . . . you wish to what?”

If Virgil thought Logan’s eyes were pretty before (and he did), that’s nothing compared to watching his face light up as hope slowly unfurls its banners. He tears a chunk out of the fish and shoves it into his mouth as Virgil explains his idea.

“We don’t wanna just let you go back into the ocean when you’re injured and can’t swim, cause that would basically be a death warrant for you and we don’t want that. But you’re clearly miserable without your pod, so - so I thought that maybe, we could go and find them? We could bring them here to visit you, let them see that you’re alive and okay, and then they’ll know where you are and they won’t panic. And once you’re all healed, you can go back to the wild with them.”

“I . . . you are truly willing to help me?”

“We don’t want you to be miserable,” Thomas says. “And your family must be worried sick. I know that if anything ever happened to Virgil and I didn’t know where he was or what had happened, I’d be distraught.”

Virgil feels something strange welling up in his chest when Thomas says that, something like pride, something like love, something like acceptance and warmth and family. Instead of expressing these sentiments, he elbows his mentor gently and mutters, “Yeah, yeah, doc, don’t get sappy on me” while smiling and staring at the floor.

Logan grins, flashing his mouthful of fangs, but Virgil can’t see this as threatening. He can’t see it as anything other than incredibly endearing. “I - this - thank you, thank you so much, that is - this is more than I could dream of.”

“The only problem is that we don’t actually know _how_ to find your pod,” Thomas says. Logan doesn’t appear deterred in the slightest.

“When we are not in the same place, we have a call that we use to find each other,” he says. “I could attempt to teach it to you and then -”

“Slow down there, bud,” Virgil interrupts. “We don’t have the same anatomy that you do, there’s no way that we could replicate a noise like that.” He hates to say it, hates to watch the way the hope in Logan’s face dies, but he can’t let it live if it’s false.

“We couldn’t make it ourselves,” Thomas muses, “but what we _could_ do is record _you_ making the call and broadcast it from the boat using the sonar equipment.”

“Could we reformat the sonar to do that?” Virgil asks. Thomas grins, sharp and intelligent.

“We absolutely could.”

Virgil grins back, and they both look at Logan, who’s cautiously smiling, hope beginning to creep back into his features. “Alrighty then, Logan. We’re gonna find your family.”

* * *

 

Thomas anchors the boat a few miles offshore and carefully prepares the sonar equipment. They’d had to record about ten different trials of Logan’s pod call before the merman had deemed it satisfactory, but he’d been so excited about seeing his pod again that Thomas hadn’t minded that much.

Out here alone, with Logan still in the lab and Virgil keeping him company, Thomas lets his mind wander to more pessimistic options. Even with the recording of Logan’s pod call, there’s no guarantee that he’s anywhere near Logan’s pod. There’s no guarantee that they’ll find the pod today, or tomorrow, and there’s no guarantee that even a fully healed Logan released into the ocean will ever find them again.

He shakes his head to clear the negativity; he can’t afford to think like that. Logan is desperate to see his pod again, and Thomas can’t let him down. He carefully hoists the sonar speaker into his arms, heads to the side of the boat, and lowers it down into the water.

Thomas has already decided that he will spend an hour in this location before he moves on, and he’ll advance five miles into the ocean every time he moves. He sits down at the monitoring equipment and presses the button to begin projecting the call out into the water.

He has plenty of busywork reports to occupy himself while he’s waiting for something to happen, so he does. His eyes flick back and forth from the sonar screen and the reports he’s filling out, not sure what exactly he’s looking for but feeling his optimism fade every time there’s nothing on the screen.

And then the screen explodes.

Thomas can feel the hull of the boat itself vibrating as the sonar detects something - some _one_ \- responding to the signal. He’s quick to shove the busywork away and pull up the sonar display, and gapes at what it displays. Something is quickly approaching, close to the surface and roughly the size of a medium shark, but that’s not what’s concerning.

What’s concerning is the other thing approaching from deeper waters, larger than the largest whale (the largest _creature_ , full stop) that Thomas has ever seen. Suddenly, the signal gets fuzzy and distorted before completely warping out, and something _thunks_ down onto the deck.

Thomas stands up, turning to see a mangled speaker on the deck. It’s covered in tooth and claw marks, crushed and crumpled and ripped like a tin can, but what’s scariest is the red-and-white spine the size of Thomas’s arm speared cleanly through it.

Dimly, Thomas realizes that perhaps summoning the pod of a lost and injured merman without having said merman immediately present might be a mistake. That’s the only realization he has time for before something explodes up out of the ocean in a spout of seawater. Thomas scrambles backwards, but not fast enough; whatever it is tackles him flat on his back and pins him to the deck. His head slams painfully into the deck, and the air is knocked out of his lungs, but Thomas can’t focus on that. He can only focus on three things.

The first thing is the gleam of furious eyes and the glint of razor-sharp fangs, bared above him. The second thing is the feeling of something sharp pressed close to the soft, vulnerable skin of his throat. The third thing is a single phrase, hissed out in a strangled, terrifyingly irate voice.

“ _What have you done to my brother?!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)  
> come yell at me on tumblr // [@teacupfulofstarshine ](https://teacupfulofstarshine.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> come scream at me on tumblr!!! // [@teacupfulofstarshine](https://teacupfulofstarshine.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lost in the Starlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16163591) by [wisepuma23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisepuma23/pseuds/wisepuma23)




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